Remote access Monster

Support
#1

Is there currently a way to query the monster catalog remotely?

I’m using the monster as part of an obs project I’m working on outside the RSP. To avoid saving the entire catalog locally (memory concerns), I’m currently querying subsets of the monster via cone searches. This workflow entails creating a list of htm7 ids locally, manually uploading them into the RSP, running a cone search script from within the RSP, then manually downloading a compressed tarball of the monster fits files back to my local machine. While this is a workable solution, it does add a cumbersome manual task in the middle of what otherwise would be fully automated program.

To my knowledge the monster is not accessible via the remote access TAP API. I also considered trying a WebDAV approach, but that seems limited to simple file transfer.

#2

Hi @dangause, thanks for this question.

You are right that the Monster catalog is not remotely accessible. It was designed to support the photometric and astrometric calibration of early data from Rubin Observatory, and for use within the workflows of the Rubin Data Management team, and thus is formatted for use with the Butler and the Science Pipelines.

It was a good idea to try a WebDAV approach, and it would help you to bulk transfer any Monster-derived files that you write to disk within the RSP – but it cannot be used to spawn processing as part of your workflow.

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