ROSAT (Röntgensatellit), lauched in mid-1990, is a collaborative effort of Germany, the UK, and the US, and provides imaging, spectral, and timing information on sources in the extreme UV and soft X-ray wavebands. ROSAT has performed an all-sky X-ray survey with an estimated number of 60,000 detected sources. Pointed observations are ongoing, from which information also on about 20,000 serendipitous sources per year is expected. Three centers (NASA-HEASARC, see §3.2.6., LDS Leicester, and MPE Garching) provide access to observation logs and to the public data (after a proprietary period of one year).
Access to ROSAT data and other ROSAT-related information is available by anonymous FTP to rosat_svc.mpe-garching.mpg.de. The directory archive/data contains observations ordered by identifier.
Access to the ROSAT archive for Starlink users is also available from the Leicester Database System (LDS) via DECNet: SET HOST RLESIS (19527), login as ESIS, select option 1, answer LTXDB, and login as XRAY. A data request form is available from this node via DECNet as the file LTVAD (19838)::DISK$ROSAT:[ROLOC.PUBLIC.ARCHIVE]REQUEST.FORM. A ``User Guide for the UK ROSAT Data Archive'' is available via anonymous FTP from darc.star.le.ac.uk:rosat/user_guide.tex. Contact S. Sembay (sse@star.le.ac.uk) or M. Watson (mgv@star.le.ac.uk).
Data from ROSAT's Wide Field Camera (WFC) are available from the Space Data Center at RAL (UK); see D. Giaretta and E. Dunford (1991). [References: Zimmermann and Harris (1991), Zimmermann (1992), Paul (1992); Voges (1992), Zimmermann et al. (1992), Sembay and Watson (1992), UK ROSAT Electronic Newsletter (subscription requests to julo@star.le.ac.uk).]