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Programmatic Access to AAVSO Light Curves

John C Wendeborn
Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
Thu, 06/20/2024 - 20:03

Apologies if this is obvious or something I should know, but I really can't find anything definitive... How can I programmatically access AAVSO light curves? I know I can manually request data from "https://www.aavso.org/data-download", but I have yet to find a way to grab this data automatically from something like Python. Does this functionality exist?

David Benn
Affiliation
Astronomical Society of South Australia (ASSAU)
Thu, 06/20/2024 - 22:01
Accessing AID LC programmatically

Hi John

There is an API for light curve data, yes.

Here is an example of a request for del Cep V and Vis. data:

https://www.aavso.org/vsx/index.php?view=api.object&ident=000-BCQ-471&data=50000&fromjd=2459752.5&tojd=2460483.5&csv&band=Vis.,V&mtype=std

See also https://www.aavso.org/rest-api-specification-vsx

I need to find the documentation online again but I'm fairly sure it exists.

David