Obtaining WUPPE Data

The WUPPE Archive is maintained at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) as part of MAST, the Multi-mission Archive at STScI. The data are stored on spinning disk and are available for immediate download through the search interface or via anonymous ftp.

Normally web users will search the WUPPE database for particular files using the WUPPE search page. The returned table of found entries allows the user to mark the images to be downloaded. A request for data begins a retrieval job. Once the requested files are located, they are written to a data distribution disk area on the system, bundled into a tar, zipped format file, and downloaded to the disk area specified by the user in the "save as..." pop-up window. The files have finished downloading when the pop-up window disappears.

Primary access is via the web although FTP access is also possible using either a web browser (i.e. ftp://archive.stsci.edu/pub/astro/wuppe/data/), or, as explained below, using anonymous ftp from an ordinary terminal with network access. As no file conversions are currently available via ftp, returned files are sent individually, in gzipped compressed mode. The observations are grouped by object type and then additionally by target, to help users find data of interest via ftp.

As an example, a typical interactive ftp session to retrieve files for alpha Cam would be: