MUSE Commissioning

During the successful commissioning runs of MUSE at VLT UT4 in February, April – May and July – August 2014, selected astronomical targets were observed to demonstrate the capabilities of the instrument, find the best observing strategies and optimize the performance of the data reduction pipeline.

The collection and release of these datasets has been facilitated by the very smooth operation of the instrument since its first observing night at the telescope. They illustrate well the power of the instrument on different science targets and the data can be used as reference to plan future programmes and, in some cases, for scientific work. However, it is important to stress the limitations of these data. Some of the observations were taken with exploratory exposure times and with non-optimal observing strategies; the headers of some of the files may not be complete and homogeneous, since the commission runs were also used to check and optimize the header keywords. In addition, extensions linked to the slow guiding system are not always present or complete.

The MUSE commissioning data is packaged by the three periods of commissioning (COMM1: 02 – 22 February 2014) COMM2A (27 April – 7 May 2014) and COMM2B (7 July – 4 August 2014). Additional data on M20 were taken between 21 and 25 August 2014, and are included in COMM2B. Lists of the commissioning data from the first two COMM runs is available (1+2A) and for the last commissioning run (2B). Follow the links to reach lists of data files divided by science and calibration. Files can then be selected in the usual way for Science Archive requests. In order to retrieve the calibration data for a given set of files, the CalSelector option can be specified on the Archive Request page. A set of pipeline recipes for reduction of MUSE data has been released.

Note that MUSE files are large, 213Mybyte (compressed), so that download to the host computer can be lengthy for large requests. Please further note that if the option "Add generic observation keywords ... " is ticked, in order to copy hierarchical keywords to 8-character FITS keywords, then the download time will be greatly increased. Generic keywords are not required by the pipeline.

COMM1 Science files, 60.A-9100(A)

Raw data for the following targets are available:

  • Solar System objects: Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Comet Linear
  • Nebulae: Eta Carinae, Orion Nebula (M42)
  • Planetary nebulae: IC 418, IC 2501, NGC 2818, NGC 3132, NGC 5189
  • Star clusters: NGC 3960, NGC 4755
  • Galaxies: IC4329, NGC 2906, NGC 3115, NGC 3433, NGC 4650A, NGC 5813, MCG-05-32-042, IRAS 05177-3242, MRC 0943-242
  • Galaxy clusters: Abell 1689, HCG 31
  • Extra-galactic fields: COSMOS

 

COMM1 Calibration files, 60.A-9100(A)

COMM2A Science files, 60.A-9100(B)

Raw data for the following targets are available:

  • Solar System objects: Saturn
  • Planetary nebulae: NGC 3132, NGC 4361
  • Star clusters: NGC 3960, NGC 6231
  • Galaxies: IC 4329, NGC 2906, NGC 3379, NGC 3628, NGC 4710, AM 1353-272, PG 1307+085, B1422+231A, TN J1338-1942, SDSS J142253.31-000148.9, SUMSS J203153-403728
  • Extra-galactic fields: COSMOS

 

COMM2A Calibration files, 60.A-9100(B)

 

COMM2B Science files, 60.A-9100(C)

Raw data for the following targets are available:

  • Star clusters: M20, NGC 330, NGC 6121, NGC 6231, NGC 6397
  • Galaxies: IC 4870 , NGC 337, NGC 428, NGC 600, NGC 7541, Tol 1924-416, UGC 463, UGC 9965, UGC 11631
  • Galaxy clusters: Abell 2163
  • Extra-galactic fields: HDFS

 

COMM2B Calibration files, 60.A-9100(C)

 

Additional daily calibrations are also available through the regular MUSE calibration programme 60.A-9900(T).

 

If these data are used for publication, please acknowledge that the results are based on public data released from the MUSE commissioning observations at the VLT Yepun (UT4) telescope under Programmes ID 60.A-9100(A), 60.A-9100(B) and 60.A-9100(C).