Products Overview

The LAMBDA site provides access to many important cosmological data sets through the menu on the left. Many of these menu items are served directly by the LAMBDA system; the remainder are links to sites maintained on other computer systems. The LAMBDA team is committed to providing access to as many data sets as possible. Please feel free to suggest additional collections through the suggestions form.

Most LAMBDA data sets now have an associated 'Data set ID', an identifier intended to enable on-line-journal authors to link to the data sets they discuss in their papers. This scheme has been developed by the University of Chicago Press in conjunction with the NASA astrophysics data centers, and has been designed to be consistent with the larger International Virtual Observatory Alliance framework. Eventually, all major astrophysical data sets should have a unique Data set ID, providing an electronic link between on-line articles and the referenced data. Authors are encouraged to make use of these IDs to specify particular data sets that form the basis for the results in their papers.

LAMBDA data set IDs are of the general form ADS/type.project_name#dataset_name. The prefix 'ADS/' indicates that the NASA Astrophysics Data System is administrating this effort on behalf of the University of Chicago Press and the NASA data centers. For example,

  - ADS/Sa.WMAP#k1_imap_yr1_v1.fits        (WMAP K1 I Map)
  - ADS/Sa.COBE#DMR_SKYMAP_31A_4YR.FITS    (COBE 31 GHz data, Channel A)
  - ADS/Sa.SWAS#10Rel_gcm0.25+0.11_class   (SWAS 10th release, target gcm0.25+0.11)
  - ADS/Sa.IRAS#IRAS_PSC.DAT               (IRAS Point Source Catalog)

At LAMBDA, all data sets are served as files and there is a one-to-one correspondence between a file and a data set ID. The ID tag for a given data set is indicated in small green type as shown in the sample below.

Sample Data Download Page

A service of the HEASARC and of the Astrophysics Science Division at NASA/GSFC
Goddard Space Flight Center, National Aeronautics and Space Administration
HEASARC Director: Dr. Andrew F. Ptak
LAMBDA Director: Dr. Thomas M. Essinger-Hileman
NASA Official: Dr. Thomas M. Essinger-Hileman
Web Curator: Mr. Michael R. Greason