IVOA Recommendation: Simple Image Access Specification Version 1.0

TL;DR

This paper specifies a standardized protocol for accessing astronomical image data from various repositories, enabling uniform and simple retrieval of images in multiple formats through a web interface.

Contribution

It introduces a new, standardized interface for querying and retrieving astronomical images, facilitating interoperability among different data services.

Findings

Defines a uniform protocol for image data retrieval

Supports multiple image formats including FITS and graphics

Enables on-the-fly image computation like cutouts

Abstract

This specification defines a protocol for retrieving image data from a variety of astronomical image repositories through a uniform interface. The interface is meant to be reasonably simple to implement by service providers. A query defining a rectangular region on the sky is used to query for candidate images. The service returns a list of candidate images formatted as a VOTable. For each candidate image an access reference URL may be used to retrieve the image. Images may be returned in a variety of formats including FITS and various graphics formats. Referenced images are often computed on the fly, e.g., as cutouts from larger images.