1. We will download MGAB-V534 observations from the Catalina Real-Time Transient Survey which can be retrieved at http://nesssi.cacr.caltech.edu/DataRelease/. Here you will find the second data release from the Catalina Surveys team (CSDR2). 

  2. At the top of the webpage is an entry Data Services. Select Single Source, which brings you to a new webpage, allowing you to run a Cone Search. For this, you have to enter the RA and Decl coordinates (J2000.0) of the object, and a search Radius. The coordinates of MGAB-V534 are RA = 00 31 51.75, and Decl = +20 20 51.0. Enter a Radius of 0.2 arcmin.

  3. Click on the link Advanced parameters which you see below the Submit button. It allows to select the Output format (HTML, ASCII or VOTable). Select ASCII. Make sure the Format selector is set to short. This will produce a comma-separated ASCII (text) output. Click the Submit button.

  4. A new webpage opens, showing the light curve of MGAB-V534. At the bottom of the page is a button view. Click this button. It will download a CSV (comma separated values) file to your PC with all observations from the light curve. This same file is also accessible in the Tutorials folder. Navigate to the Peranso Tutorials 11 folder. To do so, first locate your My Documents folder (typically C:\Users\<your_user_name>\Documents). In there is a subfolder Peranso, then select the subfolder Tutorials. Finally, select the folder 11. Plotting a light curve from the Windows clipboard. Select the file MGAB-V534 CSS.csv and click the Open button. 


  1. Open either the downloaded file, or the file from the Peranso tutorial folder. If you have Microsoft Excel configured as your default CSV file reader, then Excel will launch. If not, your default text editor will open the file. The first line in the file is a comment line showing "MasterID,Mag,Magerr,RA,Dec,MJD,Blend". We will come back to this in the next section.

  2. Copy all lines, except the first (comment) line to your Windows clipboard, using the copy function of Excel or your text editor. In the next section, we will paste the clipboard observations to an ObsWin.


IMPORTANT: next to the manual import of CRTS observations described above, Peranso also supports the direct generation of a Catalina Surveys DR2 light curve from the Internet.