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Science Archive
Frequently Asked Questions
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Science Archive
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| General |
Yes, please visit
The ESO/ST-ECF Science Archive Facility offers the following services:
The official naming of stars and other celestial objects (asteroids, comets, etc.) is done by the International Astronomical Union. The IAU does not provide commercial services on naming astronomical objects. Therefore, refer to a detailed discussion of this and related issues on the IAU web document about naming stars.
There are, however, star-naming companies that can, for instance, be found on the web (we do not list any of them here). Just remember that no matter how official they try to make their procedure sound, it's no more official than if you printed up a certificate yourself. If you still wish to purchase a star, check around and see if you can find a planetarium or museum or astronomy club which is selling stars as a fundraiser. That way, your money is likely to be going to some worthy cause.
| Query forms |
The ESO Archive interface is intended to aid general queries, especially to astronomers with no previous experience with ESO telescopes and instruments.
The general form is advisable for searches by object and to browse the archive contents for all the observations independent of wavelength range and observing mode (e.g. imaging, spectrum).
The instrument specific pages will help in finding observations which are either specific to the observing strategy, like stacks in the infrared, or to the detector or instrument setups. These pages should be used when you are searching for specific data (e.g. infrared spectra) for a given object or when you are searching individual observation programs.
SIMBAD is a database of basic data, cross-identifications and bibliography for astronomical objects outside the solar system. The SIMBAD client routines take your target name and return the center coordinates for the object, provided the object has been mentioned in the literature or is listed on a published catalog. We then query the archive for all observations whose pointing falls within the radius given in the form.
The client routines are provided by courtesy of the Centre de Données astronomiques de Strasbourg
The query operators "..", ">" and "<" apply to numbers and dates. For instance, you can specify a range of nights as:
19 01 2003 .. 21 01 2003 or 19 Jan 2003 .. 21 Jan 2003
By the way, dates can be entered with any separators as long as they follow the european convention (DD MM instead of MM DD).
More information on query operators is given in the WDB help page.
The check-box allows you to decide which fields will be included in the results table. Checked fields are listed as columns.
More information on controlling the navigation options is given in the WDB help page.
The programme ID is a code assigned to every proposal for observing time submitted to ESO. The code PPP.C-NNNN(R) is composed of:
| PPP | The period number plus 100 for large programmes, plus 200 for DDT (Director's Discretionary Time) programmes |
| C | The OPC Category |
| NNNN | A running number |
| (R) | A run identification for programmes with more than one observing run |
A DP ID is a unique identifier assigned to every data product created by ESO. This identifier is composed of the instrument acronym followed by the date and time of start of the exposure (e.g. FORS1.2005-03-29T09:37:42.829).
The Orig Filename is a temporary name used only at the instrument control workstation at the telescope. These names are displayed at the quick-look console and therefore may be used by visiting astronomers.
The speed of completion for a given database query may vary depending on the amount of data to be searched and whether or not the database server uses the indexes associated to it. Under some conditions (specially when using wild-cards), these indexes are ignored and the server scans the complete database. Since the ESO databases tend to be large, scan times of up to a minute can be expected.
The DIMM seeing is defined as the Full Width Half Maximum of a stellar image observed with a perfect large telescope, at 500nm wavelength and at zenith. It is measured over periods of a few minutes all night long. See the ESO Astroclimatology Overview web pages for more information.
ESO does not routinely extract and store a FWHM measured directly on image pixels.
| Instrument description and documentation |
VLT instruments and their capabilities are described in the VLT Instrumental Characteristics.
La Silla instrument descriptions can be found here.
Photometric zeropoints, calculated from FORS1 standard star field exposures are available at the DFO Quality Control pages.
| Getting the data |
As a rule, science data in ESO Archive are available to users worldwide as soon as data proprietary period has expired (typically: one year), while calibration files are available immediately. A limited number of special programmes may have non-standard proprietary periods or be restricted to users from ESO Member States.
Click here.
Modify your user profile here. Make sure to enter your new email address and also to get your postal address including the home country of your home institution right. This ensures that email notifications and physical data volumes can reach you.
Once submitted, an archive request can be tracked by its request number (included in the result page upon submission). Simply call the Archive Request Check tool.
For HST data, each dataset selected for retrieval will contain between 8 and 12 files plus computed products. In the case of ESO data, we currently have a one-to-one correspondance between selected observation and files (to which you have to add calibration reference files in some cases).
The e-mail notification sent upon completion of a request lists all files belonging to the selected datasets
The status values indicated next to each one have the following meaning (in chronological order of appearance).
| Status value | HST archive | ESO archive |
| N | File not (currently) in the archive | File not (currently) in the archive. When this happens, we typically leave your request open until the files materialize in the archive. Should that time become too long, we would close your request anyhow |
| F | File pending retrieval | File pending retrieval |
| P | File under proprietary
restrictions. if you think you are entitled to access these data, please contact us. |
File under proprietary
restrictions. if you think you are entitled to access this data, please contact us. Please note that some data (such as commissioning, Science Verification, Science Demonstration, WFCAM) still remain restricted to the ESO member state users. |
| R | File Retrieved | File Retrieved |
| D | File Processed (e.g. re-calibrated) (if a processing step had been requested) | File Processed. For ESO files, the processing currently consists in correcting the header (if required) and adding IRAF compatibility keywords. This particular processing is done by default to all files of supported instruments and is not a (de-)selectable option |
| S | Request-wide processing complete (e.g., the preparation of co-added products). In the case of re-calibrated files, the FITS file keyword "FITSDATE" will reflect the date of reprocessing. The "HISTORY" keywords will also indicate the new processing applied to the data. Logfiles accompany each reprocessed datasets. | For ESO data, this step can involve the retrieval of calibration reference files and their addition to the request. |
| n | where n = 1..Z: files copied to medium number n | where n = 1..Z: files copied to medium number n |
| E | Error retrieving/Processing this file. | We will keep you posted. Please note that we always try to close requests only if they completed successfully. Should it not be possible to solve the problem in a reasonable timescale, we shall contact you. |
Yes. For most scientific HST observations there exists a preview. Depending on the instrument there is an image or spectrum preview provided by courtesy of the CADC. Previews of FORS1 observations are being prepared. Previews can be inspected using Java Applets or by simply downloading the data. Previews are public, i.e., no registration is necessary to access them.
Note: Preview images are reduced in size as well as in dynamic range. In case of spectra the data are binned. Therefore, some features of images and spectra will only show up in the calibrated, full fledged data set.
At this stage, most of the datasets are available on-line in Jukeboxes. This means in theory a 24-hour service for the data retrieval for most data. However, the service time will depend on the size of a request and the size of the queue currently pending. Here we can also distinguish two categories:
At the moment the following media are supported:
| Medium/Size | <100 MB | <10 GB | <60 GB | >60 GB |
| FTP | X | X | ||
| CDR/DVR | X | X | ||
| MAG (USB disks) | X | |||
| LAN* | X | X | X | X |
* IN-HOUSE (ESO Garching)
Yes, you can. CDs and DVDs are written using the ISO-9660 format. In addition we use the extensions "Joliet" and "Rock Ridge". With Joliet extensions a CD or DVD can be read on Windows98, WindowsNT and on most Mac's, while Rock Ridge is supported by most UNIX systems. To read more about recordable CDs try this FAQ list: http://www.fadden.com/cdrfaq/. Another relevant page giving details on our DVD-R media and compatible reading equipment is also available. Please beware that ":" in file names will be replaced by "_".
On HP-UX the "mount" command doesn't support Rock Ridge extension. One possibility is to install "pfs_mount", a package which supports long filenames. Ask your system administrator to install this package.
Each operating system comes with its own definition of a valid filename. As a workaround FTP utilities offer options for renaming files.
ftp> ntrans : -
ftp> get FORS1.2005-03-29T09:37:42.829.fits
ftp> quit
% ls -ltra
% -rw-r--r-- 1 wici users 83520 Mar 28 20:12 FORS1.2005-03-29T09:37:42.829.fits
In above example the FTP command "ntrans" replaces all occurrences of a colon ":" by a dash "-". Please refer also to the documentation of your local FTP installation and look for commands like "ntrans", "nmap", "case" or "runique".
For the ESO VLT data, translation to IRAF FITS keywords is applied automatically to all datasets retrieved from the archive.
For other data, a handy and portable tool (hierarch28) is available for download.
We would like to recommend you to use the ncftp tool. Ncftp is
available from http://www.ncftp.com/download.
The tool is great for downloading entire directories at once with
its "ncftpget" variant (available from the same distribution). It also
allows to specify a complete URL as download path.
ncftpget -R ftp://ftp.eso.org/archive/MYNAME/REQNUM/
will do the trick
As Service Mode observations are executed, the raw data flow from Chile to Germany on physical media, such as DVDs or hard disks. When these physical media arrive in Germany, the data are then available in the ESO Science Archive, subject to the usual proprietary restrictions. The time delay between when an observation is finished and the raw data are available in Garching is typically 10-14 days.
Service Mode data are automatically sent to the Principal Investigator when all available data have arrived in Garching, the run has been declared completed or terminated by the User Support Department, and the data have been reviewed and/or processed by the DFO Quality Control group. See the USD Data Distrbution Web page for further information.
The Principal Investigators may request their raw science data before a Service Mode run has been completed or terminated. For further information, see the next FAQ answer.
Once Service Mode data have physically arrived in Garching (about 10-14 days after the observation has been completed), Principal Investigators may request access to their raw data by sending e-mail to the User Support Department. This e-mail should include a brief scientific justification for early release as well as the observing run ID (e.g. 073.A-0123(B)). Under normal circumstances, the data can then be made available to the requestor within two working days.
However, only raw (uncalibrated) science data associated directly with the specified observing run can be provided at this time. If calibration data are required, users will have to browse the ESO Archive using the standard query forms.
Note that the proprietary period of the raw science data will be set to one year starting from the time the data are released to the requestor. It will not be reset when the final data package is delivered when the run is completed or terminated.
A month before the first file of your programme becomes publicly available in the ESO Science Archive, you will receive a reminder email.
Pipeline-processed data are available from the archive for:
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<archive@eso.org> Last modified: Thu Jun 12 15:36:41 MEST 2008 |
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