Pulsar Observation Database Front-end

Use cases:

• If something weird happens with a pulsar (like J1713), how can we find out who else observed it during a given period?
• If we discover something odd with a telescope/backend for a given period, how can we identify which data might be affected?

Requires an API key for posting, either through environment variable $PULSAR_API_KEY or key=... in post() methods

Querying (through RESTful API or python):

• pulsar=<name>: query a pulsar by exact name (but this will also query by aliases)
• pulsar_contains=<name>: query a pulsar by partial match (will not also query aliases)
• project=<name>: query by one or more (logical OR)
• min_time=<time>: start time (astropy Time, float (MJD), or string that astropy can parse)
• max_time=<time>: end time (astropy Time, float (MJD), or string that astropy can parse)
• min_frequency=<frequency>: (astropy Quantity or float (MHz))
• max_frequency=<frequency>: (astropy Quantity or float (MHz))
• backend=<name>: query by one or more (logical OR)
• receiver=<name>: query by one or more (logical OR)
• telescope=<name>: query a telescope by exact name (but this will also query by aliases)
• telescopes=<name>: query a telescope by one or more exact names (logical OR, will not also query aliases)
• sort=<key>: can be frequency, pulsar, telescope, project, submitter, datetime_range__startswith, datetime_range__endswith. Start key with - to do descending

Examples:

Post an observation:

pulsardb.Observations.post(pulsar="J0406+30",telescope="Arecibo",frequency=200*u.MHz, project="NANOGrav", submitter="kaplan", start=Time("2022-02-01"), stop=Time("2022-02-02"))

Get observations with the VLA starting after a particular time in pandas format:

pulsardb.Observations.get(telescope="VLA",format='pandas',min_time=Time('2019-12-01'))

Add a new pulsar with optional aliases:

pulsardb.Pulsars.post(name="test",ra=1.234,dec=5.67,aliases=['test2'])

Get all pulsars in astropy.Table format:

pulsardb.Pulsars.get(format="table")

Get all telescopes in JSON format:

pulsardb.Telescopes.get()