THE CATALINA REALTIME TRANSIENT SURVEY

Data Release 3 (Beta)


CRTS FAQ

We currently serve images from the Catalina Sky Survey (CSS). The data hosted here come from CSS Schmidt telescope located on Mt. Bigelow, obtained from 2003 to 2012. Select fields were typically visited four times a night and the median total number of visits over the ~10 year span is 20.


Each image is in FITS format served as a gzip compressed file with extension .fits.gz.

An example filename is : 01_10JAN06_FA0601_0004_cutout_1521.fits.gz.

  • 01_ stands for the sequence (or set number).
  • 10JAN06 is the date of observation in YYMMMDD format.
  • FA0601 is the field identifier.
  • 0004 refers to the fourth observation in the sequence. cutout_1521 is the cutout matrix location.

To ease the serving of images, each CRTS image is divided into 1156 smaller images called cutouts.

Each cutout is about 120 X 120 pixels and has an average size of 20 KB.

Each cutout covers an area of ABOUT 5 x 5 arcminutes.

A CRTS image is 4110 x 4096 pixels and covers an area of 29,500 square arcminutes.

There is currently no limit on the number of images that can be downloaded. However,the number of images returned as a result of a query will be limited by the 5 arcminutes restriction on the search radius.

CRTS covers thirty three thousand square degrees of the sky. A coverage map is given below.

Between 4 and 400 depending on location.

The service might be under maintenance on every Monday between 9:00 A.M to 12.00 P.M (IST/ UTC+5:30). Any inconvenience caused is regretted.

The images served are cutouts derived from larger images. Thus the WRA and WDEC keywords refer to the original image centre's RA and DEC and any calculation based on assuming these to be that of the centre of the cutout will yield incorrect results. Further, ds9 users are advised to check the version being used and ensure it IS NOT between 7.0 and 7.2. Please read the following update from the ds9 web page.
"DS9 version 7.0 to 7.2 may incorrectly read Linear WCS. Please use version 6.2 until beta release 7.3b3 is available."

This site currently serves only CSS data, but we do intend to expand it to include SSS and MLS in the future. Please check back later.