An Open Catalog for Supernova Data
James Guillochon (1), Jerod Parrent (1), Raffaella Margutti (2) ((1) Harvard ITC, (2) NYU)
(Submitted on 3 May 2016)
We present the Open Supernova Catalog, an online collection of observations and metadata for presently 20,000+ supernovae and related candidates. The catalog is freely available on the web (this https URL), with its main interface having been designed to be a user-friendly, rapidly-searchable table accessible on desktop and mobile devices. In addition to the primary catalog table containing supernova metadata, an individual page is generated for each supernova which displays its available metadata, light curves, and spectra spanning X-ray to radio frequencies. The data presented in the catalog is automatically rebuilt on a daily basis and is constructed by parsing several dozen sources, including the data presented in the supernova literature and from secondary sources such as other web-based catalogs. Individual supernova data is stored in the hierarchical, human- and machine-readable JSON format, with the entirety of each supernova’s data being contained within a single JSON file bearing its name. The setup we present here, which is based upon open source software maintained via git repositories hosted on GitHub, enables anyone to download the entirety of the supernova data set to their home computer in minutes, and to make contributions of their own data back to the catalog via git. As the supernova data set continues to grow, especially in the upcoming era of all-sky synoptic telescopes which will increase the total number of events by orders of magnitude, we hope that the catalog we have designed will be a valuable tool for the community to analyze both historical and contemporary supernovae.
Comments: 24 pages, 6 figures, 1 table. Submitted to ApJ. Catalog available at this http URL
Subjects: Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR); High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE); Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM)
Cite as: arXiv:1605.01054 [astro-ph.SR]
(or arXiv:1605.01054v1 [astro-ph.SR] for this version)
Submission history
From: James Guillochon
[v1] Tue, 3 May 2016 20:00:00 GMT (1076kb,D)
http://arxiv.org/abs/1605.01054
