Search for Text in NED's Abstracts or in LEVEL5

(Latest Revision: 29 May 2009)

This page allows you to search for words -- single or in Boolean combinations -- that occur in NED's abstracts and theses, or in the LEVEL5 Extragalactic Knowledgebase.

Data Entry

Enter the word you wish to search for in the "Search Keywords:" window. Searches are not case-sensitive; e.g. "AGN" and "agn" will give identical results. Boolean searches using "and", "or", and "not" are also allowed. You may search NED's abstracts and theses, or LEVEL5, or all of these. Click on "Search" to initiate the search.

Use the "Clear" or "Reset" button to clear the search window.

Note that words separated by spaces are equivalent to words separated by "and". Also note that the text search engine searches for files containing words which match your pattern, as opposed to files containing lines with words which match your pattern.

For example:

    starburst and bar

will find files containing the words "starburst" and "bar" anywhere in the file, not necessarily adjacent to each other on the same line. Similarly,

    starburst and not bar

will find files which contain "starburst", but not "bar", again, regardless of which lines they are -- or are not -- on.

Results

When a search has completed successfully, the window clears. A few seconds later, a new page opens with a summary of the search results showing the number of NED abstracts and/or LEVEL5 files in which your word(s) occurs. Links to the first ten abstracts/files are shown, along with the first one or two lines from each abstract/file. There is also a link for accessing the next ten abstracts/files returned by the search. Finally, the search box appears at the bottom of the results page so that you may do a new text search if you wish.

Comments

The text search uses an index of all the words (aside from common words like "the", "and", "a", "galaxy", and so forth) that occur in NED's abstracts and in LEVEL5. One consequence is that a text search on an author's name will often return more abstracts than an "Author Name" search -- that searches only the author list, not the texts of the abstracts.

The indexing and text search software currently used by NED is SWISH-E, the "Simple Web Indexing System for Humans -- Enhanced".

Go to the Text Search Page.
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