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HESS (High Energy Stereoscopic System) Source Catalog

Metadata Updated: April 10, 2026

H.E.S.S. is a system of Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes for the investigation of cosmic gamma rays in the 100 GeV energy range. The name H.E.S.S. stands for High Energy Stereoscopic System, and should also remind us of Victor Hess, who received in 1936 the Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery of cosmic radiation. The instrument allows us to explore gamma-ray sources with intensities at a level of a few thousandth parts of the flux of the Crab nebula. H.E.S.S. is located in Namibia, near the Gamsberg, an area well known for its excellent optical quality. The first of the four telescopes of Phase I of the H.E.S.S. project went into operation in Summer 2002; all four were operational in December 2003, and were officially inaugurated on September 28, 2004. In recognition of its scientific results, H.E.S.S. was awarded the 2006 Descartes Prize for Research of the European Commission. This database table, first created in April 2008, contains the H.E.S.S. source list created by Dr. W. Hofmann and is based on the HTML table at <a href="http://www.mpi-hd.mpg.de/hfm/HESS/public/HESS_catalog.htm">http://www.mpi-hd.mpg.de/hfm/HESS/public/HESS_catalog.htm</a>;. The latter table is updated regularly and this HEASARC table will be updated within one week of any updates. This is a service provided by NASA HEASARC .

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: See this page for license information.

Downloads & Resources

Dates

Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date April 10, 2026

Metadata Source

Harvested from NASA Data.json

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date April 10, 2026
Publisher High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center
Maintainer
Identifier ivo://nasa.heasarc/hesscat
Data Last Modified 2026-04-06
Category Astrophysics
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 026:00
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id cedc8b94-aa5c-44c5-ae3e-30f70d23e1ec
Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
Homepage URL ivo://nasa.heasarc/hesscat
License https://www.usa.gov/government-works
Program Code 026:000
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash db2ecbf69549c032efa81ba35cdab83c1ac527e2e6859ba6d524ddb3bd96c4b3
Source Schema Version 1.1

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