Radio Galaxy Zoo Talk

Does anyone know where to go to download the Kimball&Ivezić Unified Catalog?

  • JeanTate by JeanTate

    As in, "A UNIFIED CATALOG OF RADIO OBJECTS DETECTED BY NVSS, FIRST, WENSS, GB6, AND SDSS", by Amy E. Kimball and Željko Ivezić (2008) (link to paper).

    I've downloaded FIRST, from here, but can't find how to get NVSS. I guess WENS, SUMMS, VLSS, and GB6 can be obtained separately (I haven't looked very hard); however, the Unified Catalog looks as if it has considerable value-add.

    Posted

  • akapinska by akapinska scientist

    There is an updated version of the catalogue from this year (2014) http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2014arXiv1401.1535K

    You can download both catalogues for the author's website: http://www.atnf.csiro.au/people/Amy.Kimball/radiocat.shtml

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  • JeanTate by JeanTate in response to akapinska's comment.

    Many thanks! 😃

    The v2.0 complete (FITS) catalog is "255M compressed; 1.5G uncompressed"; that may be more than I can handle 😦 Other than the small 'training' subset, it seems that "The set of components detected by FIRST and NVSS" best meets my needs for now. At some point, I want to look at not-FIRST-matched NVSS sources, either because they're out of the FIRST footprint, or because there is no matching FIRST source (within its footprint).

    I wonder if it's possible to get just the NVSS catalog?

    Posted

  • akapinska by akapinska scientist

    Ha! These are rather modest file volumes for radio astronomers 😉

    You can get NVSS from here: http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/W3Browse/radio-catalog/nvss.html
    Be careful though when you simply match the two, FIRST often will have multiple sources within the NVSS beam.

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  • amykimball by amykimball scientist

    Hi JeanTate and akapinska,

    Amy Kimball here! The problem with going directly to the NVSS website (the link that akapinska posted) is that
    you cannot access the final "science-ready" version of the entire catalog. (You can only access the full catalog
    with the pre-deconvolution parameters, or "science" parameters for individual sources by doing a cross-match.)

    The version on Vizier seems to be an old version, as it does not contain the correct number of sources for the
    final version (version 41) of NVSS.

    Jean, I am happy to make available to you a subset of my catalog, or grab all of NVSS from it, or whatever you
    need if you email me directly. (contact info available at my web page)

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  • JeanTate by JeanTate in response to amykimball's comment.

    Thanks Amy, and lovely to meet you! 😃

    For the moment, I have what I need; however, at some point I'm going to have to download and unzip the complete 1.5GB v2.0 catalog. I think my laptop is up to it (64-bit Windows7 etc), but if not maybe I'll use that as an excuse to buy a more powerful one*! Also, TOPCAT seems to be able to eat huge datasets without even breaking into a sweat, so I should be fine there too (no idea what I'd do if it chokes).

    Many thanks for the kind offer of help; it's highly likely that one day, before to long, you'll get an email from me!

    *But it would still be 64-bit Win7; I am not about to try to port everything I've done over to Win8!

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