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Anonymous Use
Observation rows under Exclusive Access protection within Portal results have a yellow background and a red 'E' stop icon.
Any anonymous user can access the MAST Portal and may retrieve any publicly-available data. However, to access any data that are still within an Exclusive Access Period (EAP) a user must be both authenticated and authorized to retrieve the data in question. Such protected data are designated with a yellow row background and the red 'E' stop icon seen on the right. User authentication also allows users to take advantage of other Portal features such as program subscriptions and notifications.
MyST Accounts
The MAST Portal is designed to work with the same MyST Accounts used by other STScI services. If a user does not already have one of these accounts in-place, they can be set up quickly through the MyST Portal.
Data Authorization
From the MyST Home page, users can set up an account, and manage data access permissions for their associated programs.
Permission to access EAP data is also controlled through your MyST Account. Principal Investigators (PI's) of observing programs are automatically granted access to this data. PIs of programs may also authorize other users to access the data during the EAP period by navigating to the MyST Home screen and selecting the Manage option. From there click the Manage Access to Exclusive-Access Science Data menu option, select your program, and enter the MyST email address of record for your colleague.
Auth.MAST
MAST also offers API token authorization for programmatic access to EAP data. Users with a MyST Account can find instructions on creating and using these tokens on the auth.MAST documentation page. With a valid token in place, authorized users will then be able to retrieve MAST EAP data through Astroquery or cURL scripts.
Be aware that API tokens will expire after 10 days of inactivity or 60 days after creation, whichever comes first. Users experiencing any trouble with existing tokens should first try generating new ones.