As part of our continued efforts to improve the ESO Science Archive, we are upgrading the technologies we use. In doing so, the ESO Archive Request Handler (accessible via https://dataportal.eso.org/rh/requests/<userid>/<request_id>) must be decommissioned after a 1-million-requests milestone and 15 years of service. This will happen in the next few weeks but not before September 2026. This upgrade may impact the ways in which users download data from the Archive:

What will break? - If you use scripts or tools to download data programmatically, be aware that the following will no longer work:

• Any version of astroquery older than v0.4.7.
• Any script containing references to dataportal.eso.org/rh, including, but not restricted to those downloaded from the ESO archive FAQs (prog_access.sh, getdata_ESO _archive.py)
• Any script downloadRequest<request_id>script.sh generated in the past

What should you do? - To ensure uninterrupted access, use current available tools:

• To download ESO data from a terminal, use eso-download, a CLI based on Astroquery
• To develop python scripts and Jupyter notebooks, use Astroquery (v0.4.12 pre-release)
• To write more general queries, visit ESO Archive Programmatic Access Guide

More details about these tools can be found at https://support.eso.org/kb/articles/archive-faq-getting-data-programmatic

Do you have any questions or need support? - Don't hesitate to get i n touch:

• Email us at support@eso.org
• Visit https://support.eso.org/

We appreciate your understanding to this needed upgrade and thank you for using the ESO Science Archive. More information available in our ESO Archive Knowledge Base.