keflavich
commented
11 years ago OK, this sounds great. At .astronomy, we had a lot of success using the Fermi tool as an approximate template because it's fairly simple. I'm working on generating a "template module" module to assist in development, but it's not quite ready yet - I'll inform you once I've done that, and you can use it as a starting point.
get_images is certainly only needed for image services. query_object probably ought to query solar system objects by name rather than by coordinates, but perhaps it would make sense to have a query_orbital_elements to search based on, e.g., eccentricity, orbital major axis, or some other parameter that is likely to be catalogued (accurately?).
In terms of the non-VOTable return, that's OK, it just means we'll need to put some extra effort in to finding an astropy table parser that matches the return type from that service.
bsipocz
I'm planning to build modules for the following services: Minor Planet Center: astroquery.mpc JPL Solar System Dynamics tools: astroquery.jpl Solar System Object Search: astroquery.ssos IMCCE: astroquery.imcce I note that the API asks modules to have a get_images(); astroquery.ssos will provide that, but the other services are purely ephemerides and orbital elements providers, they do not link to image catalogues. SSOS currently provides a VOTable return option, IMCCE provides full VO interaction, the other two provide only webpages that would have to be scraped and parsed.