The Space Telescope Science Institute will undergo extensive electrical work between from 6:00 PM Friday, December 2 to 6:00 AM Monday, December 5, 2016. All STScI services will be unavailable during this time including the archive. The HST processing and batch request pipelines will be brought down Friday afternoon and restarted Monday morning. Email sent to STScI accounts will be queued and delivered on Monday morning.
Share your concerns and ideas about MAST through our upcoming 2016 survey. Your feedback will be an important part of the December meeting of the MAST advisory group.
MAST’s advisory group meets once a year. This meeting brings together astronomers and MAST staff to discuss topics of interest to the STScI archive community. The next meeting of the MAST Users Group (MUG) will be December 15 and 16, 2016. The following are the names of this year’s MUG panel:
Todd Tripp (Chair) (University of Massachusetts)
Martha Boyer (STScI)
Steve Howell (NASA/Ames K2 Project Scientist)
Dan Foreman-Mackey (Sagan Fellow at University of Washington)
Knut Olsen (NOAO)
Dan Weisz (UC Berkeley)
Gail Zasowski (Lasker Data Science Research Fellow at STScI)
MAST and our MUG members are interested in any concerns or topics you would like to see addressed. Please look for an announcement of our 2016 survey, which will provide you the opportunity to give input. Based on feedback from the MUG, this years survey will be shorter and we hope more pertinent. Alternatively, you may wish to join the forum discussion https://forum.stsci.edu/discussion/186/mast-users-group-any-concerns-or-topics/p1?new=1i
Please also feel free to contact us at archive@stsci.edu if you have specific topics you would like MAST and the MUG to address.
As of 2016, the On-the-Fly Reprocessing (OTFR) system for HST data is being replaced with a new system, the HST online cache, to facilitate faster access to calibrated HST datasets. Each dataset retrieved from the archive will have been processed and calibrated with the most up-to-date reference files currently available, and then stored in the online cache. This is being done in a way that is transparent from the perspective of archive users: files are still requested using the same interface but with improved access times. If new calibrations are subsequently produced and delivered by the HST instrument teams, then all relevant HST datasets will be identified and queued for reprocessing and recalibration, during which time the retrieval times for these datasets may be more similar to past performance. Then once the reprocessing and recalibration is completed for each dataset, it will be placed into the online cache. Currently, the data for STIS, COS, ACS and WFC3/IR have been reprocessed and are available through the online cache, with WFC3/UVIS being the next step in this effort. Updates will be posted on the MAST Archive as this work continues in the future, and for questions please contact the Archive Hotseat at archive@stsci.edu.
The OPAL team has released their observations of Uranus from both HST Cycle 22 and 23. Two sets of observations are taken in 7 filters during each Cycle. Each filter from each set has a mosaic (projection) created, as well as a three-color mosaic. OPAL is a project to obtain long time-baseline observations of the outer planets to understand their atmospheric dynamics and evolution as gas giants. OPAL will take observations annually throughout the remainder of Hubble’s operation. Previously, observations of Jupiter and Neptune have been released. You can find all the mosaics and documentation at the MAST OPAL project page, https://archive.stsci.edu/prepds/opal/.
Figure 1: Example 3-color projection image of Uranus from Cycle 23. This mosiac uses the F467M, F547M, and F658M filters.
This newsletter is a MAST publication produced by Jonathan Hargis, on behalf of the entire MAST staff, who welcome your comments and suggestions.
The Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST) is a NASA funded project to support and provide to the astronomical community a variety of astronomical data archives, with the primary focus on scientifically related data sets in the optical, ultraviolet, and near-infrared parts of the spectrum. MAST is located at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI).
