Getting started

In order to start downloading data from the ESO archive, you’ll need to do the following:

  1. Install eso-downloader

  2. Add your ESO portal password to the system keyring (the secure place to store passwords and the like).

  3. Create a config file to specify where to download the files to

Installing eso-downloader

eso-downloader is on PyPI, and therefore can be installed via:

$ pip install eso-downloader

Development happens at https://dev.aao.org.au/adacs/eso-downloader, and after cloning the git repository, running:

$ pip install .

will install a development version of eso-downloader.

Using pip to install eso-downloader should install all the required dependencies, but you may need to install additional packages to communicate with the system keyring (see below) depending on your setup and operating system.

Adding your password to the system keyring

eso-downloader uses the keyring package to securely store your password. As the mechanism for performing the secure storage vary across systems, you may need to spend some time getting the keyring package set up correctly. Please see the keyring documentation for how to do this.

The easiest way to confirm that keyring has been set up correctly is to add your ESO portal password to the keyring. keyring provides a shell command keyring which allows you to interact with the system keyring. By running:

$ keyring set eso-downloader <your ESO portal username>

to set your password, and then running:

$ keyring get eso-downloader <your ESO portal username>

you should see your ESO password printed in the terminal. If you do not see your password, or keyring prints an error, keyring has likely not found the correct mechanism to access the system keyring. See the keyring documentation for how to troubleshoot your system.

Creating a config file

eso-downloader uses a config file to know where to save the downloaded data, and any differences in how to treat data from different proposals.

An initial starter config file (in .ini format) would be:

[DEFAULT]
username = <your ESO portal username>
base_dir = <where you want to save the downloaded data>

See Configuring for more advanced configuration options and examples.

Downloading your first ESO program

The eso-downloader shell command is designed to download all the data for a specific ESO program, allowing a team to re-run eso-downloader to download any new observations. If you only want a subset of the data (e.g. a specific science observation and its calibrations and associated files), you will want to use the Python API to have specific control over what is downloaded.

Starting the download of the program is done by running the following:

$ eso-downloader --config <path_to_config_file> <program_id>

This will print out what is being downloaded, and will skip over any files that already exist.

Running:

$ eso-downloader --help

will print out all the other options that eso-downloader supports.