Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes

The Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST) is an astronomical data archive. The archive brings together data from the visible, ultraviolet, and near-infrared wavelength regimes. The NASA funded project is located at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland and is one of the largest astronomical databases in the world.

The archive was named after Barbara Ann Mikulski, a long time champion of the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes, in 2012.[1][2][3][4][5] It is a component of NASA's distributed Space Science Data Services.[6] The archive contains the data from a number of instruments like Pan-Starrs,[7][8] Kepler,[9] and TESS,[10] as well as data for the Hubble Space Telescope[11] (HST) and James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

In October 2020 the project released the largest and most detailed 3D maps of the Universe, the classification and photometric redshift catalog "PS1-STRM". The data was created using neural networks and combines data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and others. Users can query the dataset online or download it in its entirety of ~300GB.[12][13][14]

  1. ^ "Hubble Archive, Supernova Named in Honor of Mikulski". SpaceNews.com.
  2. ^ "Astronomy archive honors Sen. Mikulski". UPI. Retrieved 2018-05-26.
  3. ^ "Barbara Mikulski Honored With Supernova". HuffPost. 2012-04-05. Retrieved 2018-05-26.
  4. ^ Dattaro, Laura. "Senator Barbara Mikulski, Supernova". citypaper.com. Retrieved 2018-05-26.
  5. ^ Weaver, Dustin (2012-04-05). "Sen. Mikulski to have supernova named after her". The Hill. Retrieved 2018-05-26.
  6. ^ "NASA Space Science Data Coordinated Archive".
  7. ^ "Space Telescope Science Institute to Host Data from World's Largest Digital Sky Survey". Newswise.com.
  8. ^ "The Biggest Digital Map of the Cosmos Ever Made". The New York Times.
  9. ^ "Tales from the Exoplanet Archive: How NASA Keeps Track of Alien Worlds". Space.com.
  10. ^ "TESS Launches New Era of Exoplanet Discovery --"Zooming in on Alien Life"". DailyGalaxy.com.
  11. ^ "NASA extends Hubble Space Telescope science operations contract". Astronomy.com.
  12. ^ "Astronomers produce largest 3-D catalog of galaxies". phys.org. Retrieved 9 November 2020.
  13. ^ Williams, Matt (14 October 2020). "The Most Comprehensive 3D Map of Galaxies Has Been Released". Universe Today. Retrieved 9 November 2020.
  14. ^ Szapudi, Istvan; Beck, Robert (2020). "PS1-STRM". MAST. STScI/MAST. doi:10.17909/t9-rnk7-gr88. Retrieved 9 November 2020. Data available under CC BY 4.0.