The Target Importer is used to import lists of fixed targets and related target information into APT as Fixed Targets. 

Accessing the importer

There are several ways to open the Target Importer: 

1. From the APT menu, select File → Import → Import Targets... , or
2. Select Targets in the tree editor, then click the Import Targets button in the APT window, or
3. Right-click Targets in the tree editor, then select Import Targets ... 

The Figure Showing How to Open the Target Importer shows what the APT GUI looks like for the latter for options 2 and 3.

Importing a Target File

In the Target Importer, click Browse to find a target file on your computer, then select the file format that matches the target file (see File Formats).  APT will attempt to automatically identify the file format. 

Assigning column names

Once you have selected a valid target file, the importer will attempt to match the column names in your file (if you provided any) with the APT parameter names. If the headers do not match the APT field names as expected, this can be corrected by using the drop-down lists at the bottom of each column. The Figure Showing How to Assign Target Parameters provides a visual example of completing this step.

File formats for importing targets

Four file formats are supported:

• White space separated 
• Comma separated values (CSV) 
• Tab separated values (TSV)
• Virtual Observatory table (VOT) 

Example CSV Target File

An example CVS formatted target file is given below.

# Name, RA, DEC, RA Uncertainty, Dec Uncertainty, RA PM, RA PM units, DEC PM, DEC PM units, Epoch, Annual Parallax, "Comments" 
# 
SDSS2346-0016,23 46 25.6700,-00 16 0.05,0.1,0.1,3.4, MAS/YR,1.0,MAS/YR,1989.9,,"From the Sloan Survey" 
# 
V-V1343-AQL,19 11 50,4 58 58,,,,,,,,,"This object is from SIMBAD"
# 
HD76932,08 58 43.9300,-16 07 57.90,,,,,,,,,
# 
RW-AUR-A,76.95629,+30.40153,,,,,,,,0.1,

There are several items to note about the format of the example CSV Target file:

• Lines starting with a # are comment lines.
  
  
• The first line in the file (there can be other comment lines between this line and the data) contains the names of the columns; the column names in the file must be unique, and they are not case sensitive. The names above are the names that APT uses, but you can use other names for some columns and APT may properly interpret them (e.g., RA can be RA, Right Ascension, or R.A.) If you do not supply a column identification line, or if your column names cannot be interpreted by APT, you can manually assign the columns.
  
  
• You do not need to supply values for all of the APT fields (e.g., you can skip the RA Uncertainty field and populate it in APT after ingest).
  
  
• Each line must contain the exact same number of entries. For CSV format, you can use extra commas to represent missing data (e.g., for SDSS2346-0016, there is one comma between the Epoch and Comment to indicate that the Annual Parallax field is not populated. Note that for white space and tab separated entries, this method will not work (i.e., you cannot have extra whitespace or tabs to indicate blank fields).
  
  
• The coordinate fields can support multiple formats, as shown above. For RA, you can use 19 09 53.0 (no units), 16h 22m 31s (units), or 118.77170 (decimal degrees). For Dec, you can use 4 53 16 (no units), -17d 52m 44.0s (units), or 22.00137 (decimal degrees); note that you cannot use ' (minutes) or " (seconds) for the units.
  
  
• Note that text fields need to use double quotes (") and not single quotes ('). 
  
  
• To specify quotes within a text field, use double double quotes (e.g., "This will preserve the ""quote"" mark.")
  
  
• For some text field data, you will need to use quotes around the text. In white space separated files, quotes are needed around all text fields that contain white space (e.g., "19 09 53.0"). In CSV files, quotes are needed if the text field contains a comma (e.g., "This object, from my list, is interesting").

For additional questions not answered in this article, please contact the Roman Help Desk at STScI.