How data actually reaches you — a 60-second VO primer
Almost every archive here can be reached several ways. Undergraduates usually start at the portal; researchers usually end up at TAP or astroquery. They are doors into the same room.
Portal (web)
Point-and-click search in a browser. Best for exploring, previewing, and grabbing a handful of files. No code.
astroquery (Python)
An Astropy package with one submodule per archive (astroquery.mast, astroquery.ipac.irsa…). The friendliest programmatic door.
TAP + ADQL
The Virtual Observatory table protocol. Send SQL-like ADQL to a /TAP endpoint (via pyvo) and get a table back. Same language across every center — including China's tap.china-vo.org.
Bulk / cutouts / VO
Bulk file mirrors for whole surveys; image cutout services; and VO protocols (cone search, SIA for images, SSA for spectra) for standardized position queries.
How this atlas is organized
Every archive is filed under the data center that actually serves its bits — MAST, HEASARC, IRSA, the ESA archives, CDS/VizieR, NOIRLab's Astro Data Lab, NRAO, ESO/ALMA, JAXA/DARTS, and China's NADC/China-VO, IHEP, PMO and lunar/planetary system. That is the honest unit of "distribution": a mission's data doesn't float in the abstract, it lives in a specific center with a specific front door. Each card standardizes four things a data user needs before committing: what data type, what wavelength, what sky coverage, and which access methods work. Toggle Researcher to swap every plain-language blurb for a runnable access snippet, and use the Region and Data center chips to isolate, say, every Chinese facility at once.
Note. Access snippets are illustrative starting points — table and collection names evolve, so check each archive's current docs for exact schema. Some facilities (many TeV arrays, some Chinese missions) release data only to their collaborations or on request; those are marked with a portal link rather than a query.
References & standards
The doors are standardized. These are the protocol documents and archive papers behind the cards above.
- TAP 1.1 — Dowler, Rixon & Tody et al. 2019, IVOA Recommendation (Table Access Protocol)
- ADQL 2.1 — Osuna, Ortiz et al. 2023, IVOA Recommendation (Astronomical Data Query Language)
- Simple Cone Search 1.03 — Williams et al. 2008, IVOA Recommendation
- SIA 2.0 — Dowler, Bonnarel & Tody 2015, IVOA Recommendation (Simple Image Access)
- SSA 1.1 — Tody, Dolensky et al. 2012, IVOA Recommendation (Simple Spectral Access)
- VOTable 1.4 — Ochsenbein et al. 2019, IVOA Recommendation
- astroquery — Ginsburg et al. 2019, AJ 157, 98
- Astropy — Astropy Collaboration 2022, ApJ 935, 167
- PyVO — Graham et al., astropy/pyvo (IVOA client library)
- lightkurve — Lightkurve Collaboration 2018, ASCL 1812.013
- MAST — Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes, STScI — archive.stsci.edu
- HEASARC — NASA GSFC High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive — heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov
- IRSA — NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive — irsa.ipac.caltech.edu
- ESA Science Archives (ESAC) — archives.esac.esa.int; Gaia archive: Salgado et al. 2017, A&C 21, 22
- CDS services — SIMBAD: Wenger et al. 2000, A&AS 143, 9; VizieR: Ochsenbein, Bauer & Marcout 2000, A&AS 143, 23
- Astro Data Lab — Fitzpatrick et al. 2014, SPIE 9149; Nikutta et al. 2020, A&C 33, 100411
- ESO Science Archive / Phase 3 — Romaniello et al. 2018, The Messenger 172, 2
- ALMA Science Archive — Stoehr et al. 2017, The Messenger 167, 2
- CASDA — Chapman et al. 2017, ASP Conf. Ser. 512, 73
- WFAU WSA / VSA — Hambly et al. 2008, MNRAS 384, 637; Cross et al. 2012, A&A 548, A119
- SDSS SkyServer / CasJobs — Szalay et al. 2002; Li & Thakar 2008, CSE 10, 18
- JAXA DARTS — ISAS/JAXA Data Archives and Transmission System — darts.isas.jaxa.jp
- LAMBDA — NASA Legacy Archive for Microwave Background Data Analysis — lambda.gsfc.nasa.gov
- eROSITA-DE DR1 — Merloni et al. 2024, A&A 682, A34
- China-VO / NADC — Cui & Zhao 2008, IAU Highlights 14; nadc.china-vo.org
- LAMOST — Cui et al. 2012, RAA 12, 1197
- Einstein Probe — Yuan et al. 2022, hxga.conf, 86
- Insight-HXMT — Zhang et al. 2020, SCPMA 63, 249502
- LHAASO — Cao et al. 2024, ApJS 271, 25 (first LHAASO catalog)
- SVOM — Wei, Cordier et al. 2016, arXiv:1610.06892
- Chang'e-3 LUT — Wang et al. 2015, Ap&SS 360, 10