Recovering Observational Data

There are basically two procedures available for the recovery of observational data.  Which procedure you care to use will depend upon a variety of factors such as your current location, whether you would like the images on some form of media, how many images are required and the size of the images.

1. The ING data archive is housed by the Cambridge Astronomy Survey Unit  at the University of Cambridge in the UK. The archive contains all data captured from the WHT, INT and the JKT telescopes.  Data in the archive is not generally available to users until the data is at least one year old after which time it will enter the public domain.  However, an observer on a particular proposal will be allowed to extract images, belonging to that proposal, from the archive.  The advantage with this procedure is one of speed.  It is generally quicker to extract images from the archive, whether using a postal service or the Internet, then to extract them directly from the ING in La Palma.  The disadvantage of this system is that it can take consider time for images to be shipped to Cambridge and made available on-line.
   
   Visit the ING Data Archive Web site or contact Bob Argyle (rwa@ast.cam.ac.uk) at the Cambridge Institute of Astronomy for more information about this service.
   
   
2. Once images are captured, they are copied to DVD, hard disk and tape.  The tapes are held on La Palma for at least a year and then are recycled.  Periodically the DVDs are shipped to the ING Data Archive in Cambridge and made available on-line.  If you require images from La Palma then your request will need to be made via the Astronomy Group.  Please contact your Support Astronomer who will, in turn, make an image recovery request to the CFG on your behalf.