The European Space Agency's ISO Data Archive contains over 30,000 scientific observations and an additional 62,000 parallel and serendipity observations. Below we give step by step instructions on how to access the Archive. You may also wish to look at ESA's Guided Tour of the ISO Data Archive. Four instruments were aboard the ISO satellite. They were:

• CAM: IR Camera and CVF, 2.5-17 microns
• LWS: Far-IR Spectrometer, 43-197 microns
• SWS: Mid-IR Spectrometer, 2.4-45 microns
• PHT: Imaging Photo-Polarimeter and Spectrometer, 2.5-240 microns

To start the ISO Data Archive, visit the Archive Interface.

You may view an 2-page illustrated guide of the archive.

Instructions on how to use the ISO Archive

1. Your browser must be compliant with JAVA 1.1

 
2. Go to the ISO Archive Interface.

 
3. Click on "Start IDA applet". The archive applet may take a few minutes to load.

 
4. You may do the following simple searches for data:
• Target Name: Simbad; NED; Name Given by Observer
• Target Coordinates: Equatorial, Galactic, Ecliptic
• TDT - ISO's Observation Identification Number


5. After searching, a list of all observations will be displayed, including the following:
• Summary of observations (RA, Dec, instrument, observing mode, wavelength coverage, aperture, observation date, and total integration time)
• Postage stamp view of the observations


6. If you wish, you may also perform the following expert searches for data:
• CAM, for: Gain, Integration Time
• LWS, for: Scan Direction, Continuum Flux
• PHT, for: Ramps per Chopper Plateau, Integration Time
• SWS, for: Shutter Position, Gain


7. If you would like to download particular datasets, press the "Login/Register" button and register with the ISO Data Center at ESAC. Getting a login ID requires about 24 hours. After you have registered, you may download data from the archive anytime thereafter.



8. After making a request for data, the data are then reprocessed through the latest pipeline reduction and put in a public ftp area at ESAC. You will be notified via email and given the location where to pick up the data.

 
9. You may access special products by changing the "Quality" to "Any," selecting "Non-Standard" and "Engineering" observation types, and include parallel mode and serendipity survey data in your search. You can do this by clicking the boxes "Inc Parallel" or "Inc Serendipity" below the "Obs Type". These special products include:
• CAM// and CAM\\ (Staring and Slewing Parallel Mode) - Section 3.4 of the ISOCAM Handbook
• LWS// and LWS\\ (LWS Parallel and Serendipity Mode) - Section 2.2.7 of the ISOLWS Handbook
• PHT77 (PHT Serendipity Mode) - Section 3.9 of the ISOPHOT Handbook
• Calibration and Engineering Data
These handbooks may be found online from the ESA website under "ISO Documentation."

10. For "Quality" = "Good", the downloaded data is useful for scientific research. In general, the highest data quality may be produced by downloading all files associated with an observation and using the interactive analysis packages described in documents found on the IPAC (http://www.ipac.caltech.edu/iso/iso.html) and ESA (http://www.iso.esac.esa.int) websites.