NAME

Astro::Catalog::IO::GaiaPick - Catalog reader for GAIA Pick Object files

SYNOPSIS

    $cat = Astro::Catalog::IO::GaiaPick->_read_catalog(\@lines);

DESCRIPTION

This class provides a read method for catalogs in the GAIA Pick Object catalog format. This format is written by the Starlink GAIA application when a user requests the result of a "Pick Object" are to be saved. The method is not public and should, in general, only be called from the Astro::Catalog read_catalog method.

FORMAT

The GaiaPick format is extremely simple. First there is an informational header that describes the subsequent columns. This is a single line:

    # name   x y ra dec equinox angle   peak    background fwhm (X:Y)

(white space has been compressed in this description to remove the need for line wrapping). The results of the "Pick Object" are then written to the following lines, using up two lines per pick as follows:

    # Sunday February 08 2004 - 16:43:59
    iras.sdf 153.3 151.5 00:42:45.757 +41:16:44.96 J2000 160.7 2.7 1.4 7.8 : 6.1

The first line indicates the date of the pick. The second line contains the parameters of the source.

Currently the reader does not attempt to parse the first line in order to derive the column information. The assumption is that the columns are always in the same order.

SEE ALSO

The GAIA application can be obtained from Starlink (http://www.starlink.ac.uk).

AUTHOR

Tim Jenness <tjenness@cpan.org>

COPYRIGHT

Copyright (C) 2004 Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council. All Rights Reserved.

This module is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Public License.