Example of how to download cutouts from IRSA

irsa_cutout.py

import os
import urllib
import urllib2
from xml.etree.ElementTree import ElementTree

mission = 'GLIMPSE'

base_url = 'http://irsa.ipac.caltech.edu/cgi-bin/Cutouts/nph-cutouts'

options = {}

options['locstr'] = '308.0 +0.7 gal'
options['sizeX'] = '120'
options['units'] = 'arcsec'
options['mode'] = 'PI'

if mission == 'GLIMPSE':
    options['mission'] = 'GLIMPSE'
    options['min_size'] = 1
    options['max_size'] = 599
    options['ntable_cutouts'] = 8
    options['cutouttbl1'] = 'IRAC1_0.6ResMos'
    options['cutouttbl2'] = 'IRAC2_0.6ResMos'
    options['cutouttbl3'] = 'IRAC3_0.6ResMos'
    options['cutouttbl4'] = 'IRAC4_0.6ResMos'
    options['cutouttbl5'] = 'IRAC1_1.2ResMos'
    options['cutouttbl6'] = 'IRAC2_1.2ResMos'
    options['cutouttbl7'] = 'IRAC3_1.2ResMos'
    options['cutouttbl8'] = 'IRAC4_1.2ResMos'

# Encode options
options = urllib.urlencode(options)

# Request page
req = urllib2.Request(base_url, options)
response = urllib2.urlopen(req)

# Download cutouts
tree = ElementTree()
for cutout in tree.parse(response).find('images').find('cutouts').findall('fits'):
    url = cutout.text
    response = urllib2.urlopen(url)
    open(os.path.basename(cutout.text), 'wb').write(response.read())