ESO Archive Frequently Asked Questions
General: What kind of products and services can I obtain from the Archive Facility?
The ESO Science Archive Facility offers the following services:
- Query the ESO observations catalog and related databases such as ambient conditions at observatory sites, observing programme schedule, calibration databases, etc. Please visit the overview page.
- Access to images, spectra, IFUs, and interferometric science data (raw observations, a growing selection of reduced or calibrated data including the Phase 3 ingested products from Public Surveys and Large Programmes) and calibrations (raw and masters) through archive data requests. Data are delivered either via Direct Download (http) or via shipped USB hard disks (starting June 2013, for requests greater than 400GB).
- On-line access to the images from the Digitized Sky Surveys made available by the Space Telescope Science Institute through its Guide Star Survey group.
- On-line access to a growing number of astronomical catalogs generated by the Public Surveys and Large Programmes via the Catalogue Facility.
- On-line access to some reference astrometric catalogs (Hipparcos, Tycho and Tycho 2), and other catalogs (USNO-A2.0, GSC2, etc) via dedicated web forms or via the SkyCat client.
- On-line access to publications from the ESO User's community (Telbib), and to the abstracts of all major astronomical journals through the ESO mirror of the ADS Abstracts Service.
- Access to a number of software tools to handle and visualize astronomical data (e.g. SkyCat, FITS Tools, Catalog server SW).
- On-line tools to prepare observations (Night Sky Almanac, Object Observability, Hourly Airmasses).
- Access to the repositories of ESO data dictionaries, glossaries and list of acronyms commonly used at ESO.