H.E.S.S. first public test data release

TL;DR

This paper announces the first public release of a small, open dataset from the H.E.S.S. gamma-ray observatory, aimed at supporting open science and data model development in gamma-ray astronomy.

Contribution

It provides a publicly available, small dataset in FITS format from H.E.S.S., including event lists and instrument response, to facilitate open data practices and tool development.

Findings

Dataset includes 27.9 hours of observations of key gamma-ray sources.

Data covers multiple years and includes off observations for background analysis.

The release supports development of open data models and analysis tools.

Abstract

The High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.) is an array of ground-based imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes in Namibia. For the first time, the H.E.S.S. collaboration is releasing a small dataset of event lists and instrument response information. This is a test data release, with the motivation to support the ongoing efforts to define open high-level data models and associated formats, as well as open-source science tools for gamma-ray astronomy. The data are in FITS format. Open-source science tools that support this format exist already. The release data consists of 27.9 hours in total of observations of the Crab nebula, PKS 2155-304, MSH 15-52 and RX J1713.7-3946 taken with the H.E.S.S. 1 array. Most data are from 2004, the PKS 2155-304 data are from 2006 and 2008. In addition, 20.7 hours of off observations of empty fields of view are included. The targets and observations were chosen to be suitable for common analysis use cases, including point-like and extended sources for spectral and morphology measurements, as well as a variable source (PKS 2155-304) and the off dataset for background studies. The total size of the files in this data release is 42.8 MB. This is a very small subset of the thousands of hours of H.E.S.S. 1 observations taken since 2004. The quality of this dataset, and measurements derived from this data, does not reflect the state of the art for H.E.S.S. publications, e.g. the event reconstruction and gamma-hadron separation method used here is a very basic one.