ann2201 — Announcement

The new European Hubble Space Telescope (eHST) Science Archive

2 December 2022

A new version of the European Hubble Space Telescope (eHST) Science Archive, hosted at ESA’s European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC) in Madrid, has been released. The ESAC Science Data Centre (ESDC) has developed a new infrastructure for the user interface and backend services for the eHST archive, to help maximise the science return of this precious data resource.

The eHST archive employs common procedures and tools, originally developed by the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre (CADC) in close collaboration with ESDC and the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST) at the Space Telescope Science Institute, to synchronise observational metadata and publicly-available data by mirroring the MAST HST archive.

With more than 1.5 million observations now completed by Hubble, the new eHST interface has been designed to enable effective and intuitive exploration of this rich data archive. It also includes accompanying catalogues (e.g., the Hubble Source Catalogue) and higher-level data products.

The eHST archive has evolved with a new user interface to allow more intuitive and visual data exploration than before. New functionalities include:

• A modern look and format that will be deployed across all of the ESDC Science Archives. This follows a common design and workflow to enhance data exploration and navigation between ESA’s different missions.
• Seamless integration with ESASky, ESA’s multi-mission visualisation interface. This allows Hubble data to be explored in the context of other missions (including the latest available data from the James Webb Space Telescope) and published catalogues.
• A new image viewer enabling quick-look inspection of FITS files, which includes image manipulation without needing to download the files.
• Optimised searches using simple commands offered in the user interface, with users then able to replicate them in other platforms (e.g. CURL, Astroquery).
• Enhanced navigation through the variety of data on a given source enabled by filtering of all metadata properties and data products to identify the relevant files.
• Access to the observing proposals and the Digital Object Identifiers (DOI) of publications from each Hubble program. The DOI archive can also be used to download the relevant data products from a given publication.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA.

Contacts

Bethany Downer
ESA/Hubble Chief Science Communications Officer
Email: bethany.downer@esahubble.org