Some information on this page applies to the DR2 data release (planned for 2019 January 28).

The starting point for the PS1 data archive is at Pan-STARRS1 data archive home page.

Catalog Access Tools

The PanSTARRS catalog is a large database of the objects and measurements of their properties including astrometry, photometry, and morphology. It includes copious metatdata metadata including links to the images that were used for the various object measurements. (Maybe include some stats on catalog/database size here.)The total database size for the DR2 release is nearly 150 TB.

• Search Forms: A simple web form searches the object catalog for objects near a search position.
  • httphttps://archivecatalogs.mast.stsci.edu/panstarrs/search.php 
  • The form includes a name resolver allowing positions to be specified using object names recognized by SIMBAD or NED.
  • The form can search results from this form can be returned in a variety of formats including HTML table, comma-separated values, etc. The columns returned can also be customized.multiple tables from the catalog, including mean objects, stack objects, and detections.  Additional tables will be added in the near future.
  • A list of target names or positions can be uploaded to search multiple positions at once.  (Currently this is relatively slow, but enhancements coming soon will make it much faster.)
  • The user can customize the columns returned from the search and can add additional constraints on the search (e.g., using magnitudes or other columns from the catalogs). 
    
    • We recommend using the nDetections>=2 constraint when searching the mean objects catalog to reduce the number of spurious objects in the catalog.  Such object
    Currently the form has a single additional parameter to require the results to include only objects with more than one detection (the default is nDetections>1). This is useful to eliminate spurious objects from the catalog, which
    • are usually detected at only a single epoch.
      Image Added
  • The search results from this form can be view interactively or downloaded as a comma-separated value file.
  • The form has an associated web service application program interface (API) that can be used for programmatic (scripted) queries to the catalog.  The API includes access to all the functionality of the interface, including constraints, selection of columns, etc.  It can return the data in various formats including CSV, JSON, VOTables.  It also has a metadata query to get a list of the available columns for a particular table.
    • See our Python Jupyter notebook for the MAST API for simple examples of how to access the PS1 DR2 catalog via the API.
  • Note: The old web form at http://archive.stsci.edu/panstarrs/search.php remains available but can only be used to search the DR1 catalog.  It also lacks many of the filtering capabilities of the new interface.  We recommend that all users of the old interface switch to the new interface.  Eventually the old interface will be retired.
• VO Cone search: 
  • http://gsss.stsci.edu/webservices/vo/CatalogSearch.aspx?CAT=PS1V3OBJECTS&RA=<ra>&DEC=<dec-degrees>&SR=<radius-degrees>
  • A generic description of this multi-catalog service is available at http://gsss.stsci.edu/Software/WebServices.htm.

• SQL query interface: MAST CasJobs
  • http://mastweb.stsci.edu/ps1casjobsImage Added
  • The CasJobs interface (which is familiar to users of SDSS) includes built-in Help along with some sample PS1 queries.  It also includes links to SQL tutorials.
  • The MAST CasJobs interface also provides access to other catalogs including GALEX, Kepler, and the Hubble Source Catalog.
  • Note that CasJobs queries can also be executed from Python.  See our Python Jupyter notebook for PS1 CasJobs queries for examples of one approach to accessing CasJobs from Python.  Note that this notebook does the same queries as the MAST API notebook, so a comparison between the two may help in understanding the relationship between the two interfaces.

Image Access Tools

The PS1 images are available for the five PS1 filters for combined multi-epoch stacked images.

• The PS1 Image Cutout Service provides color images, JPEG and FITS cutouts, an interactive image display, and full FITS image retrievals.
• The image cutout service is programmatically accessible to allow downloading either cutouts or full images via a script.
• PanSTARRS images are also accessible via the MAST Portal, which provides both a flexible interactive interface (which integrates the PS1 images with the other MAST holdings include Hubble data) as well as a powerful API that provides programmatic access to MAST data holdings.