First Release of PESSTO Spectral Data Products

Published: 21 Jan 2014
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The Public ESO Spectroscopic Survey of Transient Objects (PESSTO) is one of the two on-going ESO public spectroscopic surveys. PESSTO aims to deliver high-quality, time series optical and near-infrared spectroscopy of optical transients covering a broad range of luminosity, host metallicity and explosion mechanisms. A summary of PESSTO is available (PDF). Data products resulting from the first release of PESSTO are now available via the Phase 3 query interface at the ESO Science Archive Facility.

This first PESSTO data release consists of New Technology Telescope (NTT) optical (EFOSC2) and near-infrared (SOFI) wavelength-calibrated 1D spectra of supernovae and optical transients brighter than 20.5 mag, observed between April 2012 and April 2013 under ESO programme 188.D-3003. There are a total of 909 1D spectra of 298 unique targets in this release. Corresponding 2D spectra are also available as ancillary files associated to the 1D products. The total data volume of the release is 3 GB.

The 1D spectra are published using the tabular format following the standard for ESO science data products and a help page is available to assist in reading and displaying the 1D spectra. The PESSTO release is accompanied by a comprehensive description.

Instructions on how to read or display data in the ESO/SDP tabular data format can be found in the 1D spectrum data format help page.