SOFIA Science Data Archive: FAQs

Do you have any tutorial videos?

Yes. The IRSA YouTube channel has several tutorials that are relevant to the SOFIA Science Data Archive -- see the SOFIA playlist as well as the set of "micro-tutorials" relevant for more than one archive. The videos are in HD; you may need to manually use the YouTube gear menu to force it to realize this. There is also English Closed-Captioning available.

I have a bunch of targets and I want to get all the images for these targets. Can I do this?

You can give it a list of sources, up to 1000 sources, and it will go away and think about it and load them all into the browser. You can customize the stretch, color table, etc. You can then ask it to prepare the download for you, and when it's done, if you want, mail you a list of URLs to download the data.

I've created a nice image within the FITS viewer, and I have the stretch and overlays exactly the way that I want them. How do I save this?

Click on the diskette icon and tell it to save the PNG file. If you just save the FITS file, you will lose the overlays, and if you just save the overlays (as a ds9 region file), you will lose the underlying image.

What do I do with the zip files I get when I download data?

To uncompress the files you have downloaded, type "unzip foo.zip". To uncompress multiple files at once, type "unzip '*.zip'" (the single quotes are important), or "unzip \*.zip" -- you just have to escape out the wildcard. If you have a Windows machine, try 7zip .

How do I get more help?

The "Help" blue tab leads you into this online help. You can also download a PDF version of this manual; look at the top right of the help window.

You can submit questions to the IRSA Help Desk .

Found a bug? The known bugs and issues in this version of the SOFIA Science Data Archive are listed here . If you think you have found a bug, before reporting it, please check this list, and read this online help. It may be a "feature" we already know about. If you have found a new, real bug then please do contact us via the IRSA Help Desk . Please include your operating system version and your browser software and version. If you can, please also include any specific error message you may have gotten. (NB: In our testing, copying shortcuts worked on Windows and Linux; the command-C did not work on Macs, but selecting and clicking the right mouse button did.)