Release of the INES Archive

The International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE) Archives have been delivered to the world scientific community on 21st March. ESA, in collaboration with the Spanish Laboratory of Space Astrophysics and Theoretical Physics (LAEFF) belonging to INTA (National Institute of Air and Space Technology), has developed and set up the INES system to access IUE Data.

INES (IUE Newly Extracted Spectra) is a complete astronomical archive and data-distribution system. Its release to the community represents the final activity by ESA in the context of the IUE project. From now LAEFF, on behalf of the international astronomical community, will be responsible of maintaining INES, making it available and providing world-wide support to scientists using IUE data.

The IUE Archive contains more than 110,000 spectra of more that 11,000 astronomical objects. All data are fully reduced and calibrated. The INES archive consists of:

• an access catalog containing the parameters required to query the archive and evaluate the observations,

• a publications catalog which links each spectrum to the publications in which it has been used via the ADS,

• and the data themselves (low dispersion spectra, high dispersion spectra rebinned to the low resolution wavelength step, full high dispersion concatenated spectra, and bi-dimensional low dispersion images).

The INES Archive can be accessed at http://ines.vilspa.esa.es. Users can consult the catalogue, preview the spectra and download the data with a standard browser from the Principal Centre at LAEFF, its Mirror Centre located at the Canadian Astronomical Data Centre or any of the National Centres spread in all continents. This distributed system guarantees the availability and efficient access to the data.

Questions about the INES archive can be directed to the INES Help Desk at ineshelp@iuearc.vilspa.esa.es or at http://iuearc.vilspa.esa.es/ines_jb/HelpDesk/.

Note from the Editor: The processing algorithm for the INES Archive differs from that used to generate the IUE Final Archive (data processed through NEWSIPS), available through the MAST¹ website, http://archive.stsci.edu/. Researchers should carefully read the documentation from each before using the downloaded spectra.

¹ Multimission Archive at Space Telescope Science Institute, which is NASA's designated site for public access/retrieval of archival data for its optical/UV missions.