The ESO Science Archive Facility provides access to new data products resulting from the VISTA public survey projects. Largely complementing the first release of VISTA public survey data products from 2011, the VISTA public surveys have returned 6.2 TB of reduced data products, which can be queried for and downloaded by the international community via dedicated query interfaces at the ESO Science Archive Facility.

The survey programmes on the near-infrared 4-metre Visual and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) are a suite of well-coordinated and challenging scientific projects that range from pencil beam ­deep observations of extragalactic fields - to whole hemisphere surveys. A summary of their scientific goals and observing strategies is available at the following URL:

KMOS commissioning data were taken in late November- early December 2012 and in late January-early Februrary 2013. The spectrum of an emission line star (Hip 022112), a mosaic of separate IFU pointings of Jupiter, images of the integral field data of several galaxies in the Chandra Deep Field South (CDFS) and some images from the mosaic of IFU pointings centred on Radcliffe 136 (R136) in 30 Doradus were among the data taken in the earlier commissioning run. Images of these data appear in Sharples, R. et al., 2012, The Messenger, 151, 21 . The raw data associated with these images and spectra are made available here together with the available calibration data.

Starting as of Period 91 (and covering also observations carried over to period 91 and subsequent), the proprietary period of all science and acquisition files is counted from the moment the files can be accessed and downloaded from the ESO Science Archive, i.e. both data and metadata have arrived in the ESO Science Archive in Garching. The release date of any affected file is set to the date of that event (successful reception) plus "the proprietary period" (typically one year), and the proprietary countdown begins.

As announced in the news of the 24 March 2011, the ftp service in the context of archive requests is now to be discontinued.

As you have probably noticed, the DSS batch tool was out of service for some time.

This was due to architectural changes in the ESO infrastructure, meant to solve some vulnerability issues discovered during the summer 2012. Now that the security of the ESO infrastructure has been improved, the service has been restablished.

Please be aware that some changes were needed in the software configuration; hence, to make it to work, you have either to install the dss client again (see install instructions), or you can simply apply the patch described here.

To support the VST Public Surveys in their Phase 3 preparation, the format standard for data products to be submitted via Phase 3 has been expanded and now includes OmegaCAM data products. Please refer to: Issue 5, Date 11/01/2013.

The Ultra-VISTA survey, targeting a sub-area of the COSMOS field, represents the deepest of the six near-infrared ESO public imaging surveys, which are currently being executed at ESO’s Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA). The first release of the new infrared source catalogue in the COSMOS field is now accessible from the ESO Science Archive Facility through a new powerful user interface for querying and data download.

To support ESO spectroscopic surveys in their Phase 3 preparations the format standard for data products to be submitted via Phase 3 has been expanded and now includes spectroscopic data, i.e. extracted, calibrated, and fully characterized one-dimensional spectra.

The new ESO Science Data Products Standard (Issue 4, Date 15/10/2012) is based on the standard definitions, which were previously published in the External Data Products Standard, Issue 3 (25/05/2012). Note that the data format standard for VISTA public survey products (images and catalogues) remains unchanged, meaning that issue 3 still may be used for the preparation of these data.

As the scope of the new standard was enlarged to science data products in general, the document title has been adjusted accordingly. External data providers are not affected by this modification.

ESO Science Data Products Standard (Issue 4, Date 15/10/2012)

As part of the ongoing effort of enabling access to historical ESO data, raw frames from the FEROS instrument taken between 2001-09-01 and 2003-10-15 have been recovered from offline media. These data are now available through the standard Archive query form.

The APEX query form now allows PIs and their delegates to download proprietary processed data. These data products are now transferred over the network, allowing PI's to access their data within a few weeks after they have been taken. It is expected that this lag will be reduced to a few days in the foreseeable future.