Hubble Source Catalog: Detailed Search of Over 100 Million Astronomical Detections

Over 100 million entries combine tens of thousands of visit-based source lists from the Hubble Legacy Archive into a single master catalog. The Hubble Source Catalog (HSC) is designed to optimize science from the Hubble Space Telescope, maintained by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The detailed search displays an entry for each separate detection or nondetection using all relevant Hubble observations for a given object.

Use Cases

• Cross-match astronomical objects across multiple Hubble observations based on the catalog's combination of visit-based source lists.
• Analyze detection and nondetection statistics for specific celestial positions based on the detailed search entries.
• Study object properties across different filters and detectors based on the catalog's aggregation of separate visits.
• Perform large-scale statistical analysis of Hubble observations based on the catalog's over 100 million entries.

Strengths

• Contains over 100 million entries, indicating a large-scale astronomical resource.
• Combines tens of thousands of individual visit-based source lists, suggesting broad observational coverage.
• Provides detailed entries for each detection and nondetection, which may support completeness analysis.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• File format is listed as BIN, which may require specialized tools for access and parsing.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Combined from tens of thousands of visit-based source lists in the Hubble Legacy Archive (HLA).

Time Range

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Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 18:56:31.487422; freshness should be verified.

Geography

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