How to get names of objects in a cone search?

Question

I am currently performing a cone search around a set of quadruply lensed quasars that seem to lay in the DES footprint. I understand that the cone search returns the coordinates of all point objects within a given area, but I was curious if it is possible to return the names of the objects as well? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

A cone search is just a radial query of the catalog and so unless we have objects names (it is usually just some survey 'id' number) they cannot be returned directly in the result.  However, it is possible to use a cone search result to resolve the objects to Simbad-like names using Astropy.  For a detailed example, see https://learn.astropy.org/tutorials/conesearch.html

Hope this helps.