Reading (a particular type of) votables gives error

Here is an example votable I can’t read with astropy: http://vospace.esac.esa.int/vospace/sh/265c9a2292e138d1a5e11aaa742bb78a4c9ed6?dl=1 , but there are a lot of them of such kind. So, you can download the table, unpack (to get a *.vot file) and try to read:

astropy.table.Table.read('1475831383991O.vot', format='votable')
# gives OSError: Not a gzipped file (b'\r\n')

and trying another way:

astropy.io.votable.parse_single_table('1475831383991O.vot')
# same error

So, anyway to deal with this and open the table?

[astrofrog]

It looks like 1475831383991O.vot is actually a gzipped file?

$ mv 1475831383991O.vot 1475831383991O.vot.gz
$ gunzip 1475831383991O.vot.gz
$ $ head 1475831383991O.vot 
<VOTABLE version="1.3" xmlns="http://www.ivoa.net/xml/VOTable/v1.3">
<RESOURCE type="results">
<INFO name="QUERY_STATUS" value="OK"/>
<INFO name="ADQL_QUERY" value="select * from gaiadr1.variable_summary" />
<INFO name="CAPTION" value="If you use public Gaia DR1 data in your paper, please take note of our guide on how to acknowledge and cite Gaia DR1: http://gaia.esac.esa.int/documentation/GDR1/Miscellaneous/sec_credit_and_citation_instructions.html" />
<TABLE>
<FIELD datatype="long" name="solution_id" ucd="meta.id;meta.version">
<DESCRIPTION>solution_id</DESCRIPTION>
</FIELD>
<FIELD datatype="long" name="source_id" ucd="meta.id;meta.main">
...

If so, the extension is incorrect - I think? Or does the standard allow a VO table to be compressed like this?

[astrofrog]

I’m going to close this since this is not an Astropy issue, but @aplavin, it would be great if you could report this to the GAIA helpdesk. Thanks!