Obtaining IUE Data

The IUE Archive is currently maintained at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) as part of MAST, the Multi-mission Archive at STScI. The data are stored in gzipped compressed format online. The IUE archive contains data processed from both the IUESIPS and NEWSIPS data processing systems. Primary access is via the web although alternatively, users may download IUE files via ftp.

Normally web users will search the IUE database for particular files using the IUE search page. The returned table of found entries will allow the user to mark the images to be downloaded. Alternatively, if the camera and image numbers are already known, they can be directly entered into the IUE data Retrieval page. Your request for data begins a retrieval job. The files are written to a data distribution disk area on the system, bundled into a tar format file, and downloaded to the disk area specified by the user in the "save as.." pop-up window. The files are downloaded when the pop-up window disappears.

If you have problems reading the file formats, please check our data retrieval help page for suggested ways to read and interpret the downloaded compressed files.

If you have problems retrieving your data, please contact the ST Archive help desk.