Research Opportunities with the Public EUVE Archive

NASA's highly successful Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer (EUVE) mission is nearing completion of its second cycle of guest observer (GO) observations. This orbiting observatory has opened a new window on the universe by being the first to examine the entire extreme ultraviolet (EUV) portion of the spectrum (60--760 Angstroms), doing so both photometrically and spectroscopically. The Center for EUV Astrophysics (CEA) at the University of California, Berkeley, is responsible for the archiving and dissemination of the raw and processed data products from the EUVE mission. This archive affords an unparalleled research opportunity by providing scientists with a new, unique, and rich set of astrophysical data. Covering a wide variety of celestial objects and classifications, the publicly available data include skymaps from the all-sky and deep surveys in four wavelength bands, catalogs of EUV sources, images and time-tagged photon event lists for detected objects (``pigeonholes''), and multi-channel spectral data sets. This extensive range of raw data and data products are supported by analysis software, calibration information, and documentation. In order to maximize the dissemination of EUVE archival material, CEA has implemented a World Wide Web (WWW) server that interfaces with the archive and serves most of the EUVE archival material via request forms which run processes locally at CEA. The EUVE Archive further supports archive-based science with the advent of a Guest Investigator (GI) program. Similar to the existing one for GOs, the GI program allows external researchers to propose for and receive direct support from the CEA technical and scientific staff for particular programs of study conducted remotely or in residence. The GI program complements nicely the use of on-line WWW-based archive services, ensuring the widest possible use of EUVE data. This paper will show how this large and varied data set has enormous potential for all astrophysics researchers. This work has been supported by NASA contract NAS5-29298.