What other kinds of archival data are part of NITARP?

NITARP uses archival data from the Spitzer Space Telescope, the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED), the NASA/IPAC/NExScI Star and Exoplanet Database (NStED), the NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive (IRSA) and other NASA archive holdings. Because this program started as a primarily Spitzer program, much of the information on the wiki right now pertains to Spitzer. This page contains (will contain) more information about all of these other archives.

NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive (IRSA)

IRSA is chartered to store and serve data (images, catalogs, and some spectra) from NASA's infrared and sub-millimeter missions. IRSA also develops unique, Web-based tools to extract the maximum science value from its data sets.

There are two primary means for retrieving data from the archive:

By Mission or Data Set

From IRSA’s navigation bar, select Missions to view a list of all missions that have data served by IRSA. The associated search tools for specific data sets will be pre-populated with mission search parameters.

By IRSA Service

IRSA has various search services that provide astronomical data in different formats. Here is a brief description of each:

• RADAR is an inventory service that searches all IRSA data using on an object name (such as "M51") or by entering a region in the sky using a set of coordinates (such as "289.3848 11.9674 eq").

• Full Catalog Search (formerly known as Gator) searches all source catalogs served by IRSA.

• Popular Catalog Search provides quick access to IRSA’s popular catalogs, including 2MASS, IRAS, MSX and Spitzer.

• Finder Chart is a visualization tool to cross-compare 2MASS, DSS and SDSS image data sets. It displays a finder chart showing the same region of the sky at various wavelengths and epochs.

• Cutouts This service returns small "cutouts" of a

user-specified size of image data sets archived at IRSA. Images are provided in FITS and JPEG formats and can be downloaded individually or in batches.

• Mosaics are multiple images of large regions of the sky that are stitched together using the Montage software. There is both a downloadable client software, called Montage, as well as a Web-based service offered by IRSA.

There are also services designed for specific data sets, including:

2MASS

• 2MASS Image Services searches all full-resolution images in 2MASS data set -- commonly referred to as Atlas or Quicklook images. (For a general description of the 2MASS mission, read the Wikipedia entry.)

• The Extended Sources Image Server returns composite "postage stamp" images of extended sources, and basic extended source catalog information. These images are derived from the full-resolution, highest-quality 2MASS Atlas/Quicklook images.

• The 2MASS Large Galaxy Atlas search tool covers the the largest galaxies in the 2MASS Extended Source Image catalog.

IRAS

• The Scanpi tool is an interactive tool for viewing, plotting and averaging the calibrated survey scans from the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS). Scanpi is useful for measuring the fluxes of extended, confused or faint sources, for diagnosing source extent, and for estimating local upper limits.

MSX

• The Midcourse Space Experiment, or MSX, has an image service that serves MSX images, with the option of overlaying IRAS Point Source Catalog data and a Galactic coordinate grid.