• With the exception of certain calibration data (e.g., photometric standards), all FT data are currently proprietry and are held online in password protected web space. The PI of each programme should have been notified of their password.
• To obtain FT data, you need to contact FT Operations Centre. They have their own mechanisms for data access.

"Executive Summary" for the impatient

• Anything you type in a box or select on a list adds a restriction to the search.
• The tick-box by each parameter determines whether that parameter is included in the output report independently of whether you set a criterion.
• All criteria are combined with AND operators.
• OR operators and comparators are possible within a single box. See details below.

Types of Criteria

Text fields

Text in the criterion box is matched as an exact sub-string. No wild cards are available. Multiple words in the box are combined with an implicit AND operator. The character "|" is available as an OR operator. For example, "fred | jim", will match anything that contains "fred" or "jim" as a sub-string. Entering "fred jim" will find anything that contains both "fred" and "jim" as substrings. Either of the above searches would match a field in the database containing "freddy is jim's friend". Search are case insensitive.

Numeric fields

Any of the following comparators are allowed: = < > ~ ±.
The ~ symbol is an alternive for ±, since the latter is not always easy to enter, depending on OS, keyboard etc. For example, to select values in the range 10 to 20, you can type any of ">10 <20" , "15±5", "15 ~5" or "=15 ~ 5" into the criterion box.

If you use a mutually inconsistent set of comparators (for example < and ~), an error message is written out, but the process is not aborted. The search continues using any valid limits which were specified. The only valid pairings of comparators are (=,~), (=,±) and (<,>).

A simple number in the box is assumed to have an implicit "=". Take care of this. For exmaple, entering "0.8" in the "Seeing" field will return only those images of precisely seeing=0.8 with no tolerance, which in most case will be none or very few.

Selection Lists

Highlighting more than one item, will find observings which match any of the selections. I.e., multiple selections are combined with an OR operator. The exception is `Filters' where you have a choice of AND or OR.

Unselecting a selected item is browser specific, but most commonly it is "<Control> click" or "<Apple> click" with the mouse.

Details for Individual Fields

Name:
Name of object for which you wish to search. This is of very little general use, since you need to know exactly what object name was entered into the phase II database. It is only likely to be of use to the PI for whom the data were originally obtained. See the definition of 'text fields' above.

Equatorial Coordinates:
RA may be entered as `hh mm ss.ss', `hh:mm:ss.ss' or `dd.dd'
dec may be entered as `dd mm ss.ss', `dd:mm:ss.ss' or `dd.dd'

Galactic Coordinates:
Galactic l,b may only be entered in decimal degress (`ddd.dddd')

Search radius:
Find pointings within this distance of the requested target position.
Format may be either `dd mm ss.ss' or `dd.dd'.

Resolver:
You can use one of these internet-based name resolvers (NED, SIMBAD) to get the RA,dec for a named object. The co-ordinatesa (RA,dec or l,b) of the resolver's best guess at the object you wanted are automatically entered into the form, overwriting any that you had typed in. Names are not automatically resolved when the search submit button is pressed. You must press the Resolve name now button yourself.

Date of observation:
Time of observation specified as the civil date or modified Julian day.
If the check box is set, the output table will contain the date in the format selected in the drop-down list.

• MJD: A decimal number. (MJD=JD-2400000.5)
• DATE: This is fairly tolerant of format. YYYY-MM-DD,YYYYMMDD, YYYY MM DD are all valid. It is important to note though that date and time are in fact stored together in a single field, so in order to obtain all observations taken on a particular day (e.g., 8th Feb 2002), use a search criterion such as `>2002 02 08 <2002 02 09' or maybe `2002 02 08 ~1'.
• Night of: Find observations made on the night of the specified date. This is the local civil date at the observatory, not UTC. The format is fussy and must be specified as YYYYMMDD. You may combine multiple dates with the OR operator |, such as `20020208 | 20020209. Using an AND operator is non-sensical.

Integration:
Standard `numeric' criterion, so comparators and ranges are allowed.

Seeing:
Standard `numeric' criterion, so comparators and ranges are allowed.

Airmass:
Standard `numeric' criterion, so comparators and ranges are allowed.

Instrument:
Standard `selection list' criterion. Selections combined with implicit OR. RATCam (LT CCD camera) and DIllCam (two FT CCD cameras) are clones of each other.

Telescope:
Standard `selection list' criterion. Selections combined with implicit OR. Although "---ANY---" appears as an option on the list, this is equivalent to not selecting anything

Imaging Filters:
Multiple selections may be combined with either AND or OR operators using the drop-down list on the form. All the currently installed imagers have two filter wheels. A filter of "Clear" therefore refers to an empty slot in one of the filter wheels. It is not a "clear" piece of physical glass. Conceptually, every exposure is taken through two different filters, though in almost all cases, one of those is "Clear".

Binning:
Legal values are 1, 2, 3 or 4. This is a standard `numeric' criterion, so comparators and ranges are legal.

Group ID:
Arbitrary ID string selected by the PI when group was entered into the phase 2 database. Follows the standard matching rules for 'text fields' defined above.

Observation ID:
Arbitrary ID string selected by the PI when group was entered into the phase 2 database. Follows the standard matching rules for 'text fields' defined above.

Maximum records to return:
Some search criteria will return many thousands of matching observations. In order to protect you from your web browser trying to load them all, this parameter can be set. The search results page will inform you if the reply table has been truncated. You may set this parameter arbitrarily large if you really want to return all matching observations.

Display thumbnail images:
Select this check box to include a small thumbnail of the data in the search results. The image is not displayed for data still in their proprietary period. Obviously this can significantly slow down the loading of your search results.