How to read this atlas
Public astronomy archives are huge and growing. But "stored" is not the same as "studied." The Atlas separates the two — laid out by where, on the electromagnetic spectrum, each archive actually lives.
The top bar is the electromagnetic spectrum, in true log10(frequency / Hz). It runs from radio at the left to gamma-ray at the right, with the eight band labels embedded inside. Frequency ticks above and wavelength callouts below give two ways to anchor.
Beneath the spectrum, every archive is a horizontal bar drawn over the exact frequency range it observes. Wide bars are wide-band facilities (Gaia, ALMA, Spitzer, Suzaku); narrow bars are line-tracking or single-window instruments (NVSS, EHT, Chang'e-3 LUT). Bars are grouped into rows by band and packed greedily so they don't overlap.
Within each bar, the saturated top fraction is how much of the archive's data has been individually mined in the literature; the lighter bottom fraction is the still-stored reservoir below. Hover any bar for the layer summary; click any bar to expand the full breakdown and open the archive's portal.
Methodology — the vector mining score
Each archive is broken into its meaningful data layers (Gaia: astrometry / RVS / BP-RP photometry / BP-RP spectra / epoch variability / non-single stars). Each layer carries two numbers in [0,1]:
- processing — how mature the data product is. Raw single-frame = low; calibrated catalog = high.
- mined — how much of the layer has been individually studied in the literature. Bulk catalog citations alone do not lift this number; we want per-source or per-window papers.
The bar's top is the mined value of the most-mined layer. The bar's bottom is the mined value of the least-mined layer with processing ≥ 0.5 — i.e. the data is ready to use; readers haven't gotten there. The gap and the reservoir below are the editorial point.
Source proxies, in priority order: SIMBAD/NED references-per-source for catalog layers; ADS dedicated-paper counts for instrument-specific and time-domain layers; and a curator override where the proxies lie. Each mined value carries a confidence flag.
References & data sources
- SIMBAD — Wenger et al. 2000, A&AS 143, 9
- NED — NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database
- NASA ADS — Kurtz et al. 2000, A&AS 143, 41
- VLASS — Lacy et al. 2020, PASP 132, 035001
- NVSS — Condon et al. 1998, AJ 115, 1693
- FIRST — Becker, White & Helfand 1995, ApJ 450, 559
- LOFAR / LoTSS — van Haarlem et al. 2013; Shimwell et al. 2022 (DR2)
- MeerKAT — Jonas & the MeerKAT Team 2016
- ASKAP / RACS — Hotan et al. 2021; McConnell et al. 2020
- GMRT / TGSS — Intema et al. 2017, A&A 598, A78
- FAST — Nan et al. 2011; Jiang et al. 2020
- Parkes / Murriyang — Manchester et al. 2001; PPTA Hobbs et al.
- ALMA — Wootten & Thompson 2009, IEEE 97, 1463
- Planck — Planck Collaboration 2020, A&A 641
- Herschel — Pilbratt et al. 2010, A&A 518, L1
- SCUBA-2 / JCMT — Holland et al. 2013, MNRAS 430, 2513
- SPT — Carlstrom et al. 2011, PASP 123, 568
- ACT — Aiola et al. 2020 (DR4); Naess et al. 2020
- COBE — Smoot et al. 1992, ApJ 396, L1; Mather et al. 1994
- Spitzer — Werner et al. 2004, ApJS 154, 1
- WISE / NEOWISE — Wright et al. 2010; Mainzer et al. 2014
- JWST — Gardner et al. 2023, PASP 135, 068001
- IRAS — Neugebauer et al. 1984, ApJ 278, L1
- AKARI — Murakami et al. 2007, PASJ 59, S369
- SOFIA — Young et al. 2012, ApJ 749, L17
- ISO — Kessler et al. 1996, A&A 315, L27
- 2MASS — Skrutskie et al. 2006, AJ 131, 1163
- SPHEREx — Doré et al. 2018; Crill et al. 2020
- UKIDSS — Lawrence et al. 2007, MNRAS 379, 1599
- VISTA / VVV — Sutherland et al. 2015; Minniti et al. 2010
- SDSS — Abdurro'uf et al. 2022, ApJS 259, 35 (DR17)
- Pan-STARRS — Chambers et al. 2016
- Rubin / LSST — Ivezić et al. 2019, ApJ 873, 111
- HSC SSP — Aihara et al. 2018, PASJ 70, S4
- ZTF — Bellm et al. 2019; Masci et al. 2019
- ASAS-SN — Shappee et al. 2014; Kochanek et al. 2017
- CRTS — Drake et al. 2009, ApJ 696, 870
- TESS — Ricker et al. 2015, JATIS 1, 014003
- Kepler / K2 — Borucki et al. 2010; Howell et al. 2014
- Gaia — Gaia Collaboration, Vallenari et al. 2023 (DR3)
- Hipparcos / Tycho-2 — Perryman et al. 1997; Høg et al. 2000
- DESI — DESI Collaboration, Adame et al. 2025 (DR1)
- LAMOST — Cui et al. 2012, RAA 12, 1197
- DES — DES Collab., Abbott et al. 2018, ApJS 239, 18 (DR1)
- OGLE — Udalski et al. 2015, AcA 65, 1
- ATLAS — Tonry et al. 2018, PASP 130, 064505
- GALEX — Martin et al. 2005, ApJ 619, L1
- HST / STIS — Woodgate et al. 1998, PASP 110, 1183
- HST / COS — Green et al. 2012, ApJ 744, 60
- Chang'e-3 LUT — Cao et al. 2011; Wang et al. 2015
- Swift / UVOT — Roming et al. 2005, SSRv 120, 95
- IUE — Boggess et al. 1978, Nature 275, 372
- FUSE — Moos et al. 2000, ApJ 538, L1
- AstroSat / UVIT — Tandon et al. 2017, AJ 154, 128
- SOHO / STEREO — Domingo et al. 1995; Kaiser et al. 2008
- Chandra — Weisskopf et al. 2002, PASP 114, 1
- XMM-Newton — Jansen et al. 2001, A&A 365, L1
- eROSITA — Predehl et al. 2021; Merloni et al. 2024 (DR1)
- ROSAT — Voges et al. 1999; Boller et al. 2016 (2RXS)
- NICER — Gendreau et al. 2016, SPIE 9905
- NuSTAR — Harrison et al. 2013, ApJ 770, 103
- Suzaku — Mitsuda et al. 2007, PASJ 59, S1
- MAXI — Matsuoka et al. 2009, PASJ 61, 999
- IXPE — Weisskopf et al. 2022, JATIS 8, 026002
- Fermi / LAT — Atwood et al. 2009; Ballet et al. 2023 (4FGL-DR4)
- INTEGRAL — Winkler et al. 2003, A&A 411, L1
- H.E.S.S. — H.E.S.S. Collab., Abdalla et al. 2018 (HGPS)
- VERITAS — Holder et al. 2006, AstroPart. Phys. 25, 391
- MAGIC — Aleksić et al. 2016, AstroPart. Phys. 72, 76
- HAWC — Abeysekara et al. 2017, ApJ 843, 39
- GBT — Prestage et al. 2009, Proc. IEEE 97, 1382
- VLBA — Napier et al. 1994, Proc. IEEE 82, 658
- CHIME — CHIME Collab., Amiri et al. 2022, ApJS 261, 29
- MWA — Tingay et al. 2013, PASA 30, e007
- WMAP — Bennett et al. 2013, ApJS 208, 20 (9-yr)
- EHT — EHT Collaboration 2019, ApJL 875, L1
- MSX — Price et al. 2001, AJ 121, 2819
- APOGEE — Majewski et al. 2017, AJ 154, 94
- DENIS — Epchtein et al. 1997, The Messenger 87, 27
- Roman — Spergel et al. 2015, arXiv:1503.03757
- KiDS — de Jong et al. 2013, ExA 35, 25
- 2dF / 6dF — Colless et al. 2001, MNRAS 328, 1039; Jones et al. 2009, MNRAS 399, 683
- KMTNet — Kim et al. 2016, JKAS 49, 37
- EUVE — Bowyer et al. 1996, ApJS 102, 129
- ULTRASAT — Shvartzvald et al. 2024, ApJ 964, 74
- ASCA — Tanaka, Inoue & Holt 1994, PASJ 46, L37
- Einstein (HEAO-2) — Giacconi et al. 1979, ApJ 230, 540
- Athena — Nandra et al. 2013, arXiv:1306.2307
- EGRET / CGRO — Hartman et al. 1999, ApJS 123, 79 (3EG)
- AGILE — Tavani et al. 2009, A&A 502, 995
- Swift / BAT — Gehrels et al. 2004, ApJ 611, 1005
- CTA / CTAO — CTA Consortium, Acharya et al. 2013, APh 43, 3