California Institute of Technology

IRSA Virtual Observatory APIs (Caltech/IPAC)

The NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive exposes IVOA-standard Virtual Observatory interfaces — Table Access Protocol (TAP/ADQL), Simple Cone Search and Simple Image Access v2 — over NASA infrared and submillimeter mission catalogs and images. Verified live 2026-08-19: the TAP sync endpoint returned real TAP_SCHEMA rows, and the capabilities document declares VOSI capabilities, availability and tables, DALI examples, and an IVOA SSO cookie security method.

Documentation GitHub

Documentation

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Documentation

https://irsa.ipac.caltech.edu/voapi.html

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Documentation

https://irsa.ipac.caltech.edu/docs/program_interface/api_catalogs.html

Other Resources

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Capabilities

https://irsa.ipac.caltech.edu/TAP/capabilities

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GitHub

https://github.com/Caltech-IPAC

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API entry from apis.yml

aid: caltech:irsa-vo
name: IRSA Virtual Observatory APIs (Caltech/IPAC)
x-operator: institution
x-operator-rationale: IPAC is a division of Caltech and operates IRSA on the institution's own domain.
  The archive is NASA-funded and holds NASA mission data, but Caltech is the operator of the service and
  its interfaces.
description: 'The NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive exposes IVOA-standard Virtual Observatory interfaces
  — Table Access Protocol (TAP/ADQL), Simple Cone Search and Simple Image Access v2 — over NASA infrared
  and submillimeter mission catalogs and images. Verified live 2026-08-19: the TAP sync endpoint returned
  real TAP_SCHEMA rows, and the capabilities document declares VOSI capabilities, availability and tables,
  DALI examples, and an IVOA SSO cookie security method.'
humanURL: https://irsa.ipac.caltech.edu/voapi.html
baseURL: https://irsa.ipac.caltech.edu/TAP
tags:
- Astronomy
- Virtual Observatory
- TAP
- ADQL
- NASA
- IPAC
- Open Data
properties:
- type: Documentation
  url: https://irsa.ipac.caltech.edu/voapi.html
- type: Documentation
  url: https://irsa.ipac.caltech.edu/docs/program_interface/api_catalogs.html
- type: Capabilities
  url: https://irsa.ipac.caltech.edu/TAP/capabilities
  method: probed
- type: GitHub
  url: https://github.com/Caltech-IPAC