Modernizing the OSO-8 High-Energy Celestial X-ray Data Set

This project is designed to modernize the data from the High Energy Celestial X-ray Detector on OSO-8, which observed sources around the entire sky from 1975 to 1978. The observations from this instrument provide an archive of information on celestial X-ray sources during a time when no other satellite data were obtained in the 20-500 keV range. The energy range of this experiment overlaps that of the the OSSE instrument on CGRO and so the data may allow synoptic observations of recently discovered sources which were not previously investigated using the OSO-8 data set. The goal is to make the data set more readily usable. The results will include a near-line FITS data set and online documentation, both of which will be available from the National Space Science Date Center (NSSDC). The philosophy is to do nothing irreversible to the data. We do not intend to produce high level products (e.g. spectra, light curves) directly, but to make their production possible by the archival investigator. This paper describes the state of the archive, summarizes our approach to its restoration, gives examples of the possible science to be done, and provides a few lessons learned.