Obtaining HPOL Data

The HPOL Archive is maintained at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) as part of MAST, the Multi-mission Archive at STScI. Data may be obtained either by searching the HPOL database and marking files for retrieval, or through anonymous ftp.

For information about the files, please see the Data Products web page.

Normally web users will search the HPOL database for particular files using the HPOL search page. The returned table of found entries allows the user to mark the images to be downloaded. A request for data begins a retrieval job. Once the requested files are located, they are written to a data distribution disk area on the system, bundled into a tar, zipped format file, and downloaded to the disk area specified by the user in the "save as..." pop-up window. The files have finished downloading when the pop-up window disappears.

Primary access is via the web although FTP access is also possible using either a web browser (i.e. ftp://archive.stsci.edu/pub/hpol/data/). This directory contains subdirectories named by dataset identifier e.g. alf-cam_19890416. You may also anonymous ftp from an ordinary terminal with network access.

As an example, a typical interactive ftp session to retrieve files for alpha Cam would be: