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Obtaining Swift UVOT data

The Swift Ultraviolt/Optical Telescope (UVOT) data are provided to MAST by HEASARC at Goddard Space Flight Center.

Normally web users will search the Swift UVOT database using the Swift UVOT search interface. The returned table of found entries allows the user to mark files 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. The wait time will be proportional to the number of images requested.

File access is also possible from the Swift UVOT preview pages which are also accessed via links from the search results page. Clicking on the entries in the Dataid column will display a web page displaying the images, and providing links to the individual files.

Primary access is via the web although FTP access is also possible using either a web browser (i.e. ftp://archive.stsci.edu/pub/swift/), or, as explained below, using anonymous ftp from an ordinary terminal with network access.

As an example, a typical interactive ftp session to retrieve files for observation 00041358002 would be:

ftp archive.stsci.edu
anonymous
username@univ.edu
binary
cd pub/swift/
cd 00041358
dir
    00041358001
    00041358002
cd 00041358002
dir
   sw00041358002uuu_ex.img.gz
   sw00041358002uuu_sk.img
   sw00041358002uuu_rw.img.gz
prompt
mget *

Note the data are stored in subdirectories; the first level directory is simply the first 6 numbers of the observation ID. If you have problems retrieving your data, please contact the ST Archive help desk.

Swift data may also be accessed at the following web sites:

HEASARC maintains the complete set of Swift UVOT data.