sci24001 — Announcement

Latest updates to the eHST Science Archive and ESASky

7 March 2024

- Chris Evans, María Arévalo Sánchez, Deborah Baines, Javier Espinosa Aranda, Mónica Fernández Barreiro, Marcos López-Caniego Alcarria, Bruno Merín Martin, Paule Sonnentrucker -

The European Hubble Space Telescope (eHST) Science Archive is hosted at ESA’s European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC). Building on the long-standing partnership between NASA and ESA on Hubble, the eHST archive provides a European mirror for the public data in the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST) archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute. The eHST interface has been designed at the ESAC Science Data Centre (ESDC) for effective and intuitive exploration of this rich data archive, and includes accompanying catalogues and higher-level data products from MAST.

To help maximise the science return from these data, a new visualisation tool for spectroscopy from the COS and STIS instruments has been included in the eHST archive. The new tool enables users to plot the spectra over custom ranges, inspect the flux (and associated error) values at each wavelength, compare multiple observations for quick visual inspection of data quality, and plot separate orders or segments of the data. If the observation IDs are already known, they can simply be entered in the observations box in the spectral viewer. If the data are identified from an object search in the eHST search page, individual files can be opened using the ‘Viewer’ icon, or multiple observations can be selected and copied across to the viewer using the ‘Download metadata and products associated’ option in the left-hand panel (see Image B). For quick previews, fixed-format postcard previews of each reduced spectrum are also still available for each file. The latest version of eHST also includes the Hubble Advanced Spectral Products (HASP), a new product from MAST which provides coadded and combined spectra from COS and STIS of a given target; these can also be displayed in the spectral viewer, for inspection of the data or comparisons with other targets.

We are also delighted to announce the release of a new version of ESASky (v6.0). This is ESA’s multi-mission visualisation interface to explore astronomical observations, including data and outreach images from Hubble and Webb, in the context of other missions and published catalogues. The latest version now includes the feature of user areas. After a quick registration process, you can now save ESASky sessions, customise the layout of ESASky, and upload your own tables of data for quick visualisation and comparison with other catalogues and available data. The ‘sessions’ feature means that you can now save the current state of the application, including selected datasets, and easily return to it later, without the need to recreate the session from scratch. Further details on the new user area feature are available here.

We encourage the European user community to explore these latest features at: https://hst.esac.esa.int/ehst and https://sky.esa.int, and to provide us with your feedback.