M4AST

Modeling for asteroids

Version: RC 2.0 2023-11-13

Presentation

The M4AST project aims to provide a VO-compliant suite of services for modeling reflectance visible and near-ir spectra of atmosphereless bodies, offering:
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API

The M4AST web service offers the following methods:
search
to search for asteroid spectra available in various datasets.
analyze
to analyse visible and near-infrared spectra of planetary surface, in particular asteroids.
classy
to classify asteroid reflectance spectra in the framework of the asteroid taxonomy presented in Mahlke, Carry, and Mattei 2022.
And the administrative method:
getAvailability
to get the availability of the M4AST Webservice. Check now!

Practical use

The M4AST service is a SaaS which allows to access methods to search and analyze asteroid spectra through SOAP requests. The underlying technology (XML+SOAP+WSDL) being inherently interoperable, you can use them and implement them regardless of what your favourite platform and operating system are. For that, you can freely download toolkits (client) to help you to make the integration of the M4AST service seamless with your code.

The easiest way to query M4AST makes use of a non-interactive network downloader (e.g. curl, wget) to send HTTP requests and to receive the results "on your desktop". Advanced users may prefer to query M4AST directly through its API.

Scientific issues

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Technical issues

The M4AST service was designed and developed by IMCCE, now LTE (Observatoire de Paris / CNRS) as part of the IMCCE Virtual Observatory project (2004-2012). It is supported by the VO-Paris Data Centre, the french VO, and the EuroPlaNet project. The M4AST service is hosted by the LTE, and is accessible through HTTP query methods and XML+SOAP+WSDL Web service.

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User support

Each response sent back by the M4AST service contains a ticket number. This 18 digits number (e.g. 166134214081377735) identifies each request and may be used to retrieve information on its processing. If you face with errors by using the M4AST service (it could occur that no relevant error message is returned), please report us the ticket number corresponding to the problem. It will help you to anderstand and solve it, and you will help us to improve the service.

The information regarding requests sent to M4AST is stored in a dedicated database. No personal information is stored, except the IP address provided by the client, which is employed to make statistics on the geographical localization of the users. The M4AST logs are never disseminated nor sent on request. You can access to the public logs by using the following URL:

https://ssp.imcce.fr/webservices/m4ast/showLog.php?ticket=[ticket]&method=[method]

where:

ticket
Ticket number of the request
method
Keyword defining the service:
  • M4AST(search)
  • M4AST(analyze)

If you are confronted with a bug, or if you would like to request improvements or special needs, please use the LTE Mantis Bug Tracker (Quick access: use the Report issue button in the portal menubar).

How to cite M4AST

If M4AST was helpful for your research work, the following acknowledgment would be appreciated: "This research has made use of LTE M4AST VO tool".

Bibliographic references

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