The Lasair database has information about objects and candidates. Each candidate is a detection made by the telescope, and the collection of detections of a given star is an object.
Queries are written with the SQL language, that is built in three pieces through the Lasair web interface:
WHAT you are selecting
WHICH tables you are selecting from, and
CONDITIONS on what you are selecting.
This example query looks for objects within the Orion Nebula. Once you have logged in to Lasair, you can create a query from the /myquery page, shown at left. Write a name and description, then keep the query inactive and not public (first 2 green boxes).
The “select attributes” box has autocomplete for the possible attributes, which are also listed in detail at the /schema page. In this case we chose the object identifier objectId, and the number of good candidates, ncandgp.
Select only the objects table – meaning no joins. The “where” box has the square degree of the sky which is the Orion Nebula.
Then click “Create query”.