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General MAST Data Download Options

MAST has several options retrieving data, with some missions having more options than others.

  • MAST Data Discovery Portal

    The MAST Data Discovery Portal (aka MAST Portal) is found at https://mast.stci.edu . The default search on the MAST Portal is by coordinates, or by the name of a target that gets resolved into coordinates. You can also upload a list of targets. Users who wish to search by other types of metadata, such as proposal ID, mission name, filter, or proposer name must use the advanced search option. The portal provides users the ability to download data directly to their systems, either through the browser or by generating a cURL script that can be executed on the user’s system.

  • MAST API

    The MAST application programming interface (API) enables programmatic access to search for and retrieve MAST datasets.

    • astroquery.mast is a user-friendly Python package that wraps the MAST API, and is recommended for most users.
    • The MAST API itself is language-agnostic.

  • Modern Mission Search Forms

    Mission-specific search interfaces can be found under https://mast.stsci.edu/search/ui/#. You can select a data collection from there, or go directly to a specific colleciton's search form (for example, https://mast.stsci.edu/search/ui/#/hst for the HST search form.)

  • Classic Mission Search Forms

    The older-generation, mission-specific search forms are referred to as "MAST Classic" forms. These forms remain available to users while the collections are brought into our modern search forms. You can find the Classic search forms by visiting the listing of Classic search forms.

  • Reference Files

    MAST Classic and Portal allows users to retrieve reference files that were used during the most recent calibration. Please use the HST Calibration Reference Data System (CRDS) interface or JWST CRDS interface for single observations. You can also use CRDS from the HST command line and the JWST command line.