IRSA Catalog Search Service
Application Program Interface (API)
objstr keyword
An optional keyword in the IRSA Catalog Search Service API is objstr, which specifies the search center for cone and box spatial searches. The keyword objstr is a string that specifies either the target name (as resolved by SIMBAD or NED) or the coordinates of the spatial search center.
This string must be URL encoded. URL encoding replaces unsafe ASCII characters with a percent sign ("%") followed by two hexadecimal digits. See the table below for a list of commonly used values that need to be URL encoded.
URL Encoding for Commonly Used Characters| Character | URL encoding |
| Plus ("+") | %2B |
| Comma (",") | %2C |
| Forward slash ("/") | %2F |
| Colon (":") | %3A |
| Semi-colon (";") | %3B |
| Equals ("=") | %3D |
| Question mark ("?") | %3F |
| Space (" ") | %20 or + |
| Quotation marks (") | %22 |
| Less than ("<") | %3C |
| Greater than (">") | %3E |
| Percent ("%") | %25 |
Examples
- What is the objstr corresponding to M31?
- What is the objstr correspond to the ra dec coordinates: 00 42 44.3, -41 16 08? objstr=00+42+44.3+-41+16+08