Document Purpose and Scope¶
The purpose of this document is to facilitate science with SPHEREx data by providing users with an overview of the SPHEREx data that are available at the NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive (IRSA) at Caltech, as well as instructions for accessing and downloading these data. We also provide tips for exploring the data and getting help with any questions you may have. This User Guide will evolve as the SPHEREx project delivers new data products and tools to IRSA to make available to the public.
SPHEREx Overview¶
SPHEREx is a NASA Astrophysics Medium Explorer mission that launched in March 2025. During its planned two-year mission, SPHEREx will obtain 0.75-5 micron spectroscopy over the entire sky, with deeper data in the SPHEREx Deep Fields. SPHEREx data will be used to:
- constrain the physics of inflation by measuring its imprints on the three-dimensional large-scale distribution of matter,
- trace the history of galactic light production through a deep multi-band measurement of large-scale clustering,
- investigate the abundance and composition of water and biogenic ices in the early phases of star and planetary disk formation.
The community will also mine SPHEREx data and combine it with synergistic data sets to address a variety of additional topics in astrophysics.
More information is available in the “Mission Overview” section of the SPHEREx Explanatory Supplement.