ESA Science & Technology - ISO Data Archive Software Upgraded to Version 6.0

The Off-Line Processing Pipeline copes well with a number of instrumental artifacts in an automatic fashion. The final products, available from the ISO Data Archive, can however be improved by processing them further, in particular by means of the Interactive Analysis software packages, as documented in the ISO Handbook. The resulting products are called Highly Processed Data Products (HPDP). In a broader sense this definition includes catalogues and atlases. These sets are therefore inhomogeneous in nature, but their presentation is made as uniform as possible.

Version 6 of the ISO Data Archive allows for continuous ingestion of new HPDP sets. An up-to-date list of HPDPs is created on-the-fly from the IDA using the dedicated link in the ISO Home Page, also upgraded with this release to evidence this new kind of archived products.

How to query HPDP and catalogues

Open the Highly Processed Data Products panel (located below the main search panel). Sets of HPDP can there be queried against author and title. Combined queries with any other panels are also possible.

A separate panel allows to query on any given catalogue. A description of each catalogue can be obtained by clicking on the title, coloured in blue. Having selected the catalogue to query, a dedicated query panel will be created on-the-fly. A descrition of each catalogue column can be obtained by clicking on the column name, coloured in blue.

As for any IDA query, the result will be a list of observations. Observations having HPDPs will have the "HPDP" button on the left highlighted.

How to access HPDP data and info

In the query results panel, as for any other product, the HDPD can be retrieved directly on disk by pushing "Retrieve" and selecting "HPDP". For more information and features, click on the highlighted HPDP button at the left of any given observation. This will lead to a new panel. Abstracts will be given of all HPDP sets containing the observation. Six buttons on the left will lead to:
 

1. The data. Clicking this button will allow to move the observation to the shopping basket for retrieval.
    
2. The documentation. If it is a published paper, a link to the ADS abstract, otherwise, a link to a technical note stored in the IDA.
    
3. The button "Add related" will move all observations pertaining to the given HPDP set to the shopping basket for retrieval in one go.
    
More buttons may be highlighted depending on the availability in the given HDPD set:

4. The Postcard: An illustration (plot, image) of the reduced observation. This will be obtained by automatically launching your default browser.
    
5. The Atlas: This is defined as an illustration of the observations together with other information provided in the HPDP set, such as external SEDs, stellar models, etc.
    
6. The Catalogue. A new panel will be launched, pointing to the line containing the observation. The whole catalogue may be saved on disk or printed.

How to upload your HPDP

If you want to share the result of your ISO exploitation with the scientific community, please send an e-mail to helpdeskiso.vilspa.esa.es with a short description of your data set. The ISO Data Centre will contact you shortly after and take care of the details of the ingestion. Clearly, we must preserve some standards (for example in documentation, file formats) in order to facilitate the work of the ISO Data Archive user, but we will provide full support for this.

Other improvements in IDA Version 6 are :

• The IDA Applet is launched now from an independent browser window. This avoids the applet being lost when going to other web pages from the IDA browser window.
• The quality information in the IDA has been improved and extended for many observations (mainly observations with flags different from 'Good') in the comment field. So now, the information about the different problems which could affect a given observation is clearer and more reliable.
• Fix problem in the CAM Observations Details window (mismatch between CAM filters and detectors, and appearance of extra empty columns).

Alberto Salama, ISO Data Centre, 24/07/2003

About the ISO Data Archive

ISO was the world's first true orbiting infrared observatory.  With four highly-sophisticated scientific instruments and a pointing accuracy at the arc-second level, ISO provided a facility of unprecedented sensitivity and capabilities for exploring the Universe at infrared wavelengths from 2.5 - 240 microns.  During its highly-successful in-orbit operational phase from November 1995 to May 1998, ISO made some 30 000 individual scientific observations of all types of astronomical objects, from within our own Solar System out to the most distant galaxies. The resulting database provides a treasure trove of information for further astronomical research.

All data is available to the community via the ISO Data Archive and from an increasing number of suppliers of astronomical information (Virtual Observatories).

The ISO Data Archive (IDA) has been on-line since December 1998. It was designed and developed at the ISO Data Centre, in continuous and fruitful cooperation between users and developers, providing a unique, state-of-the art astronomical data archive.

It contains all the ISO raw and fully processed, science and calibration data as well as all ancillary data (engineering, uplink and downlink data) for a total of about 400 GBytes stored on magnetic disks. Through a powerful and user friendly Java User Interface, over 1400 registered users have already downloaded the equivalent of 8 times the total number of scientific observations in the archive, a monthly retrieval rate of around 15%.

The IDA main characteristics can be summarized as:

• Powerful and complex queries against the observations catalogue
• Configurable results display, including product visualization tools
• Customisable product retrieval via a shopping basket
• Choice for direct retrieval of products on disk
• Selection of product level for retrieval
• Product retrieval via FTP
• Tracking of publications
• Inter-operability with other archives and applications.