NASA Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF)

Mission Characteristics

Description: The IRTF is a 3.2 meter telescope, optimized for infrared observations, and located at the summit of Mauna Kea, Hawaiʻi. The observatory is operated and managed for NASA by the University of Hawaiʻi Institute for Astronomy.
Wavelength: 0.7 - 5.3 µm (SpeX and iSHELL); 5-25 µm (TEXES)
Area Coverage: Targeted
Instruments: 3-m telescope with
Time Coverage:
  • SpeX: semester 2016B (Aug. 1, 2016 start) onwards
  • iSHELL: semester 2017A (Feb. 1, 2017 start) onwards
  • TEXES: semester 2000B (Aug. 1 2000 start) onwards
Proprietary period is 18 months.
Science Products Generated: Observation data and calibration files
Acknowledgement:

Please include the following acknowledgment in any publication that makes use of NASA IRTF Archive data products:
"This work is based [in part] on archival data obtained with the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility, which is operated by the University of Hawaii under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration."

For TEXES data (from the TEXES team): We encourage interaction with at least one member of the TEXES team (texes @ swri.org) when combining or analyzing data to help ensure optimal use of the TEXES data. Please be sure to cite the paper describing TEXES in any publications including TEXES data. If one or more TEXES team members put in significant effort helping with additional or higher order data reduction, analysis, or writing within a forthcoming paper, we kindly request that you include them as a co-author.

IRSA Services

NASA Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) Archive (Help) Interface to the NASA IRTF Archive

Additional Data

Spectral Library & Extended Spectral Library Over 400 mostly stellar spectra from SpeX.
MEarth SpeX spectra of 498 M dwarfs within 33 pc.

Other Resources:

NASA Infrared Telescope Facility NASA IRTF home page
IRTF Legacy Archive IRTF Legacy data - raw data from Feb. 1, 2001 to July 31, 2016 (semester 2000B to 2016A)
SpeX Documentation Documentation for the SpeX medium-resolution spectrograph and imager
iSHELL Documentation Documentation for the iSHELL high-resolution spectrograph and imager
TEXES Documentation Documentation for the TEXES high-resolution mid-infrared spectrograph
TEXES night logs/data reduction scripts TEXES night logs and data scripts used in the data reductions of the archived reduced data.
TEXES data reduction code TEXES data reduction code on Github.