Scientific Research using the Electronic Archive of the Hubble Space Telescope

The Hubble Space Telescope (HST), a collaborative project between the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the European Space Agency (ESA) has been operating since 1990. The European HST Science Data Archive, operated at the Space Telescope European Coordinating Facility(ST-ECF) in Garching, Germany, contains all data taken with the scienceinstruments of the HST. The services of the Archive include data browsing,preview, retrieval and re-calibration. Access to the Archive is providedthrough the World Wide Web, data distribution is through the Internet oron bulk media.This paper describes the data products, access to theArchive services, and the procedures for the use of the HST Science DataArchive by qualified scientists from remote locations. The Archive providestools implemented as Java Applets which can be used over the Net. For moresophisticated operations access to a suitable data analysis system isrequired; such software can be downloaded from our site.