Comment by graerg
6 hours ago
Hey! Former astronomer here; I used to work a lot with SDSS data products. Do you happen to have a link to any sort of photometry DB/catalog for Rubin? Basically I’m looking to grab a ton of data but I’ve been out of the field for a while and I’m not sure where they publish their data sets and which ones you’d recommend as being relatively accessible.
You want to check out the early science release info at https://rubinobservatory.org/for-scientists/resources/early-... . This is all early science from preliminary data. It is mostly to help people ramp up developing their software against the type of things they will be seeing in the future. There some known issues and gotchas outlined in the release. Hopefully this will be enough to whet your appetite. The data seen in this sky viewer is part of the Data Preview 2.
I hope the data releases are a bit better than what I've seen from recent telescopes.
The common pattern seems to be that the majority of data is locked away behind multi-year embargo periods, or never released to the public at all with no explanation why, with only the smallest little crumbs of raw data actually released to the public, and usually years out of date. Also you have to go through some kafkaesque chain of technologies/servers/bureaucracy to get access to that little bit of data.
It's a little depressing to me when the public funds these telescopes and then get snubbed when it comes to getting access to the data they produce.
We are getting pretty far outside my area of expertise / knowledge on this topic here, but I know I and others agree with you here. There is a Rubin Observatory data access policy out there. Don't quote me on the exact specifics but I believe that most colleges and research institutions already have a mechanism to enable data access setup, or can get one. This is mostly an id auth type thing to make sure those accessing have data rights. There is a policy where people not associated with those can request access too, but I am not sure the procedure and would not be qualified to weigh in on anything more specific.