The Catalogs and Surveys Group at STScI has digitized the all-sky photographic surveys from the Palomar and UKSTU observtories and used these data to construct guide star catalogs. This page outlines the data copyrights for these products only.

The GSC-I is copyright (c) 1989-1996 by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. All Rights Reserved. [contact]

The GSC-II is copyright (c) 2001-2008 by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. All Rights Reserved. [contact]

The GSPC-I is public domain scientific data.

The GSPC-II is public domain scientific data.

The DSS datarights are held by the following institutions depending on the survey plate material used.

Southern Hemisphere Surveys observed prior to 1993 [contact]
Southern Hemisphere Surveys were made with the UK Schmidt Telescope at the Anglo-Australian Observatory. Plates from these surveys have been digitized and compressed by the STScI. The digitized images are copyright (c) 1976-1993, jointly by the UK SERC/PPARC (formerly Science and Engineering Research Council/Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council, and currently the Science and Technology Facilities Council), and are distributed herein by agreement. All Rights Reserved. Represented by the Wide Field Astronomy Unit at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh (ROE).

Southern Hemisphere Surveys observed since 1993 [contact]
The "Second Epoch Survey" of the southern sky was made by the Anglo-Australian Observatory (AAO) with the UK Schmidt Telescope. Plates from this survey have been digitized and compressed by the STScI. The digitized images are copyright (c) 1993-2004 by the Anglo-Australian Observatory Board, and are distributed herein by agreement. All Rights Reserved.

POSS-II Northern Hemisphere Surveys [contact]
The compressed files of the "Palomar Observatory - Space Telescope Science Institute Digital Sky Survey" of the northern sky, based on scans of the Second Palomar Sky Survey are copyright (c) 1993-2003 by the California Institute of Technology and are distributed herein by agreement. All Rights Reserved.

POSS-I/Quick-V Northern Hemisphere Surveys [contact]
All material not subject to one of the above copyright provisions is copyright (c) 1984-2004 by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Color DSS Images [contact]