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Search with SQL (open in new window)

1. Go to the SQL Search tool (link opens in new window). To get there from the astronomers' main page, look under Search Tools. To get there from the public main page, look under SkyServer Tools, then Search. Or, you can practice the query in the query box at the bottom of this page.

2. In the main window, type the following query (note that lines preceded by -- are comments):

   SELECT top 100 h.objid, m.objid2 -- return object IDs of both observations

   -- for 100 objects

   FROM matchhead h, match m      -- from "match" tables

   WHERE h.objid = m.objid1           -- observations match between tables

   AND h.matchcount > 1           -- more than one observation

   AND m.type1 = 6                   -- observation 1 is of a star

   AND m.type2 = 6                   -- observation 2 is of a star

   The query returns the object ID of each observation of the star, for 100 stars.

3. To learn more about each observation of the star, you will need to go to another tool. Save the object ID of each observation; you will need it to find the observations later. One way to save the object IDs is to request the query results as CSV, then save the resulting CSV file to your machine.

Use the query box below to practice running the query shown above. You can modify the query to return other data if you want. Click Submit to run the query or Reset to reset the query box.

Next: Explore the observations of each star

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