Help us make the documentation more complete. If you receive an error message not covered in the following descriptions, please forward it to the MACHO webmaster. Include a description of the input and events leading upto the error.
Due to multiple network transactions between the database server and the archive file server, the response is not instantaneous but should occur within 30 seconds.
If the response takes more than 30 seconds, there is probably a network connection failure, a network protocol error or a database protocol error. Forward an email to the MACHO Manager including:
The archived files are stored within a robotic mass storage tape silo. Retrieval time for a file is variable. If the file already resides on the disk cache, the time is negligible but if the file needs to be retrieved from the tape silo, the delay can be two or more minutes. The delay includes contention with other users for drive allocation, two minutes to load the tape into the drive, time to position the tape to the file, and the time to load it onto the disk cache.
Occasionally, an error message will be displayed in the vicinity of a clickable field. This is usually caused by a database protocol error when composing the 'ftp' command to be embedded within the display for later user access. Forward an email to the MACHO Manager including:
Most errors encountered during file retrieval are due to the authentication token's lifetime being exhausted.
The following messages are indicative of Netscape error returns. Equivalent error messages from other Web browsers have not been collected.
(1) Authentication token lifetime exhausted. Reset the token either by:
or (2) Communications path between the Web server and the Data server is broken. If above method didn't work, send email to the MACHO Manager.
Acknowledgement to use when referencing MACHO Project data
"This paper utilizes public domain data originally obtained by the MACHO Project,
whose work was performed under the joint auspices of
the U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration by the
University of California, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under contract No.
W-7405-Eng-48,
the National Science Foundation through the Center for Particle Astrophysics of the
University of California under cooperative agreement AST-8809616, and
the Mount Stromlo and Siding Spring Observatory, part of the Australian National University."
and