1.2 Enhanced Data Products

1.2.1 Hubble Legacy Archive And Hubble Source Catalog

The Hubble Legacy Archive (HLA) is designed to facilitate access to Hubble Space Telescope data in a form that is suitable for use by a broad variety of science projects. The HLA is a joint project of the STScI, the European Coordinating Facility (ST-ECF; operations ceased on Jan. 1, 2011 and their archives are now served out of ESO/ST-ECF), and the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre (CADC). HLA data are available from the HLA website (http://hla.stsci.edu/) or via the MAST Portal by selecting the "HLA" mission.

The HLA is periodically updated to include new products, and users should consult the release notes (http://hla.stsci.edu/hla_release.html) for the most up-to-date information. The vast majority of public ACS, WFPC2, WFC3, and NICMOS imaging data, as well as some ACS and NICMOS grism data, are available through the HLA. Source lists for ACS, WFPC2, and WFC3 are also available. Statistics regarding the coverage of the HLA can be found on the HLA homepage.

The Hubble Source Catalog (HSC) is constructed by cross-matching overlapping HLA source lists from different visits to the same sky area.  The resulting catalog has excellent astrometry (based on Gaia) along with accurate multi-color and multi-epoch photometry for more than 100 million objects.  The HSC database can be used for large-scale science projects that would require much more effort if started from scratch using the standard HST pipeline products.  For further information on the catalog properties and data access, see the HSC home page (https://archive.stsci.edu/hst/hsc).

The HLA and the MAST Portal provide a sky view allowing users to discover which datasets are available at a given position on the sky. Using the HLA interactive display (also accessible via the Portal), Hubble imaging data may be displayed with catalog overlays from SDSS, 2MASS, GSC2, FIRST, GALEX, HSC, Gaia, or PanSTARRS. Source lists from the HLA may also be plotted in the HLA interface.

1.2.2 High-Level Science Products

High Level Science Products (HLSPs) are observations, catalogs, or models that complement, or are derived from, MAST-supported missions. These include Hubble (HST), James Webb (JWST), TESS, PanSTARRS, Kepler/K2, GALEX, Swift, XMM, and others. HLSPs can include images, spectra, light curves, maps, source catalogs, or simulations. They can include observations from other telescopes, or data that have been processed in a way that differs from what is available in the originating archive.

Some HLSPs are available through the MAST Portal (http://mast.stsci.edu), and more will be added in the future. For access to the complete collection of HLSPs, and instructions for users to contribute their own HLSPs to the collection, please visit http://archive.stsci.edu/hlsp/.