Query the 2MASS PSC (Point Source Catalog) using wget. The original version of this code (2mass01) was slow and prone to producing empty output files. This was solved by "URL encoding" parst of the strings in the wget call. The OTW routine called encode2mass is what performs this step.
% 2mass02 16+39+23.350+-02+24+20.5 240The name of the output catalog is: 2mass.cat, a somewhat complicated table. This file (2mass.cat) can be reduced and simplified with a python code like 2mass_00.py:
% 2mass_00.py 2mass.cat > 2mass.cdfp
The rather complicated position string above (16+39+23.350+-02+24+20.5) is the URL-encoded version of Ra,Dec = 16:39:23.350 -02:24:20.5, and is produced with:
encode2mass 16:39:23.350 -02:24:20.5