IUE Comet Database - SWP Observations

Status: Archived

This volume contains observations made by the Short Wavelength Prime (SWP) instrument of the International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE) of 37 comets over the period October 1978 to March 1996.

The total data set size is about 460Mb. It has been divided into chunks to facilitate download over the web:

• Catalog, index and other support files (220Kb zip file)
• Documentation files (311Mb zip file)
• High-dispersion data (24Mb tar file)
• Low-dispersion data (116Mb tar file)

An overview of the volume contents is provided in the aareadme.txt file.

Catalog Files

Catalog files contain the overview information and parameters used in loading the PDS central catalog, specifically, or for developing other interfaces to the data outside of PDS. The information they contain, particularly in their descriptive text fields, should be clear, complete, and understandable to a research user who is not necessarily a mission or instrument specialist.

These files are located in the catalog/ subdirectory. The directory contents are described by the catinfo.txt file.

• IUE mission file
• IUE instrument host file
• SWP instrument file
• Data Set file
• References file
• Target files are provided for each comet observed, but these files generally contain little useful information. You can brose them in the catalog/target subdirectory.

Documentation Files

In addition to the small text files located throughout the volume to describe directory contents, some specific documents are provided to assist with understanding the data and processing involved. These files are located in the document/ subdirectory. The directory contents are described by the docinfo.txt file.

The collection of document provided with the IUE Comet Database volumes is rather extensive. Each document has been put in its own subdirectory. These documents include:

• The comet_list/ directory contains the list of comets included in the full IUE Comet Database, sorted in several ways. All the files are flat ASCII text.
• The ephem/ directory contains ASCII text files with ephemerides of each comet observed.
• The iue_manual/ directory contains the following:
  • iue_manual.asc, an ASCII version if the IUE manual (V2) describing the instruments, data reduction procedures and archive products;
  • The appendix to the IUE manual, also in ASCII text;
  • Chapter 2 from Version 1 of the IUE manual, in PDF. (the TeX source and a style file needed to generate the PDF are also available, as are separate JPEG files for the graphics and images, in the iue_manual/ directory
• The iuecal/ directory contains the iuecal.asc file which lists the files needed to perform the flux calibration for these data. The LWP and SWP calibration files are also included in this directory.
• The not_included/ directory contains the file obs_not_included.txt file, which lists observations specifically excluded from the data base because of contamination, low signal-to-noise, or because they weren't, in fact, pointed at the comet.
• The observation_log/ directory contains ASCII and JPG images of log pages for the comet data.
• The spatial_geometry/ directory contains text and graphics files describing the geometry and layout of the spectrograph apertures relative to the Fine Error Sensor (FES) camera and the plane of the sky.
• The ulda/ directory contains selected information from the IUE Uniform Low Dispersion Archive (ULDA) by M. Festou, including separate files for the figures and table.

Data Files

The data are divided into two subdirectories, which are in turn divided into subdirectories for each comet observed. The subdirectories are named by the IAU designation for each comet. You can find a list of comet names and numbers, sorted in different ways, in the document collection described above. The list of comet names sorted by IAU designation is in the document/comet_list/by_iauid.txt file.

• High-Dispersion data files
• Low-Dispersion data files

Index Files

The index/ directory contains three indices into the data:

• indxinfo.txt describes the directory contents.
• index.tab is a CSV table meeting the PDS indexing requirements, with a minimal set of additional observational parameters. (PDS label) It covers only this data set (i.e., SWP data only).
• cumindex.tab is a cumulative index for all three volumes of the IUE Comet Database. It is a simple concatenation of the index.tab files from each volume. (PDS label
• iueindex.tab is an index acros the complete IUE Comet Database that includes all the major observing parameters from the label files. It is sorted by comet name and start time of the observation. (PDS label)