Tuesday, December 27, 2005

using conVOT

Introduction
conVOT is used for converting ASCII or FITS files to VOTable(1.0)format. For ASCII files, it supports both ASCII files with column delimiters and ASCII files with fixed width columns.

Steps for downloading and running conVOT
(1)Download conVOT.zip(version 0.9) file from http://vo.iucaa.ernet.in/~voi/conVOT.htm
(2) unzip downloaded conVOT.zip.
(3) for running conVOT, Java Runtime Environment (1.3 or above)is required. you can download it from http://ava.sun.com
(4) to run conVOT applet, type"java -jar conVOT.jar" on command prompt

Steps for converting ASCII(Data.txt) file containing tabular data into VOTable format
(1) Data.txt file has following content delimited by special character ';'
RA;DEC;NAME;RVEL;E_RVEL;R
010.86;+41.27;N 224;-297;5;0.7
287.43;-63.85;N 6744;839;6;10.4
023.48;+30.66;N 598;-182;3;0.7
Above file has six columns, one header with column names and three rows of actual data.
(2) run conVOT applet by typing "java -jar conVOT.jar" on command prompt. Following figure displays the conVOT applet.



(3) select option 'Convert ASCII' and it will display the screen which allows you to browse directory structure and select 'ASCII file'.Following figure shows the selection of 'Data.txt' file



(4)click the button 'load' which will load the 'Data.txt' file as follows



(5) click 'ok' button as there is no comment line in the file. Clicking 'Ok' will display the next screen. changing 'Unit Line: No Unit Line for the table' and 'First data line: 2" option will result following screen.



(6)After clicking 'ok' it will display following screen



(7)clicking "ok" will display a screen with delimiter option. Select option 'other!! special character only' and put ';' delimiter in the column. This will look like as follows.



(8) clicking 'ok' will display a screen containg table with 'metadata' and 'data' section as follows.



(9)clicking "ok" will generate VOTable file as follows.



(10) Finally save file to appropriate location.

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