This panel permits to choose among several possible presentations, and to set up a few parameters regarding the submitted query.

1  Maximum Entries per table

defines the maximal number of records that will be returned by the query; this limitation applies to each table, i.e. a query involving four tables may return 200 retrieved rows. Note that there is a default limitation of 9999 entries – see a trick to overcome this limitation in the FAQs.

2  Output layout

proposes a choice between different presentations of the query results:

• ascii tables, are generally displayed much faster than the well-formatted HTML tables. Several options are available concerning the font size, and the links to full records as simple links (the default) or as checkboxes, permitting a display of several full records on a single page;

• HTML tables are better formatted and easier to read, but can be very slow to upload and display; in practice, HTML tables containing more than a few hundred rows can hardly be managed by the current browsers

• Detailed results display all details of each retrieved row with full explanations; this format will also be very slow in practice when many rows are concerned, and is recommended only when 10 or less rows are displayed.

• Tab-Separated-Values (TSV) is a format where the columns are separated by the tab character; this format is generally understood by the spreadsheet utilities. The |-Separated-Values format is quite similar to TSV: the columns are separated by the vertical bar instead of the tab character.
  To upload the results into a spreadsheet, just select this Tab-Separated-Values format: the output will not be displayed on your browser, but you can either save the result in a file for later processing, or open it in a spreadsheet application.

• the VOTable format is a fully XML-compliant format containing, in a single document, the data as well as the meta-data which describe accurately how to interpret the document. It can be validated against an XML-Schema in the XML-VOTable(xsl) choice, or against a Document-Type-Definition (DTD) in the XML-VOTable(DTD) choice.

• the XML-Astrores format is quite similar to VOTable for the metadata part, but the actual data are formatted as tab-separated values, which are easier to process by simple scripts like Perl. It is currently used in the exchanges with the AladinJava applet. Astrores metadata contain a description of the column meaning, the units, the UCDs, the way to access full records, the links to correlated data, etc...

• VOPlot opens a plotting tool where the results can be presented in a graphical interactive environment, with a lot of capabilities, and interaction with the AladinJava tool. VOPlot is developped and maintained by our Indian colleagues.

• a FITS format (added in April 2001) for the output tables is available (since April 2001). This output format allows to use the fv FITS viewer for e.g. plots, etc.

• A SkyCat-compatible output was also added in April 2001; the corresponding cgi-name is /viz-bin/asu-acl followed by the qualifications specified with the ASU conventions.

3  Output Order

proposes to present the resuts, either in the increasing order of the sorting parameter (e.g. the distance to a designated target), or in the decreasing sequence. The default sorting parameter is the distance to the target is a target was specified, or the original ordering.

4  Output Positions

The positions of the objects studied in the astronomical catalogues may be found in a large variety of coordinate systems – equatorial coordinates for various equinoxes and epochs, galactic positions, etc. The computed positions allows to present the results in the user's favorite system(s): just check the boxes corresponding to the desired coordinate system. The system entitled Position stands for the system used for the Target definition, i.e. is defined by the menu of coordinate systems in the part of the form dealing with the definition of the Target.

last update: 13 Feb 2024