Fix for the PS1 metadata query failure

[SunilSimha]

PS1 query fails sporadically. i.e., 1 out of every 5 searches at the same coordinate (and search radius) runs into this error. This is definitely a server-side issue.

The error occurs when trying to download table metadata from Pan-STARRS. For some reason, only these metadata entries are affected: [astrometryCorrectionFlag', 'pmra', 'pmdec', 'pmraErr', 'pmdecErr']. When this error occurs, instead of returning a full dict of metadata for those entries, the server returns only two values: name and db_type. Our function is requesting name, type, description.

I suggest storing the metadata table locally upon a successful query and just re-using the local table whenever the server barfs. This way, the user can still access those metadata entries instead of seeing None.

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

This PR addresses sporadic Pan-STARRS metadata query failures by implementing a local caching mechanism. When the server returns incomplete metadata (missing 'description' field), the code falls back to a locally cached version of the metadata table.

Key Changes:

• Implements caching of successfully retrieved PS1 metadata to local CSV files
• Adds fallback mechanism to use cached metadata when server returns incomplete data
• Updates .gitignore to exclude generated cache files from version control

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 1 out of 2 changed files in this pull request and generated 5 comments.

File	Description
frb/surveys/panstarrs.py	Adds try-except block to cache metadata on successful queries and fallback to cached version on KeyError when server returns incomplete data
.gitignore	Excludes generated PS1 metadata CSV cache files from version control

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[profxj]

thanks!

Is a test tickling this?
If not, can we add one?

[SunilSimha]

Added a number of assertions to the Pan-STARRS test now to hopefully catch this issue. I've checked it works locally with Pytest.