Followers of this blog and our team’s scientific endeavors may know we have a curated database of brown dwarfs we work with. An initial version of this database has been published in Filippazzo et al. 2015 and contains information for 198 objects. The database is also maintained on Github, where we welcome contributions from other researchers. We’ve developed a set of tools for astronomers to work with SQL databases, namely the Python package astrodbkit. This package can be applied to other SQL databases allowing astronomers from all fields of research to manage their data.
Here we introduce a new tool: AstrodbWeb, a web-based interface to explore the BDNYC database.

AstrodbWeb is an interactive web application designed to explore SQL databases such as our own BDNYC database. It runs with astrodbkit as its backend to generate the proper SQL queries based on user input. With AstrodbWeb users can send SELECT SQL queries to the database, perform searches by coordinates or name, check the database inventory on specified objects, and even plot spectra interactively.

Results for the following SQL query:
SELECT s.id, s.ra, s.dec, s.shortname, p.source_id, p.band, p.magnitude
FROM sources as s JOIN photometry as p ON s.id=p.source_id
WHERE s.dec<=-10 AND p.band=="W1"

AstrodbWeb is built with Python running Flask and, as mentioned above, uses astrodbkit for SQL queries. The output tables are formatted with the DataTables plugin for jQuery, which allows for interactive controls including sorting and searching. The spectrum plots are generated with Bokeh, which also provides interactive controls such as zooming or resizing the figure.

An example SpeX spectrum for 2M0345+2540 as returned by AstrodbWeb

AstrodbWeb was developed by David R. Rodriguez for the BDNYC research team. The code for AstrodbWeb can be grabbed here and can be modified to work with any research team’s SQL database. Publications that benefit from this application should cite its Zenodo record.