HESSCAT ivo://nasa.heasarc/hesscat NASA/GSFC HEASARC Hofmann 2026-10-09 NASA/GSFC HEASARC help desk heasarc-vo at athena.gsfc.nasa.gov Survey Source 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 . https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/W3Browse/all/hesscat.html Catalog Research served-by HEASARC TAP https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/xamin/vo/cone?showoffsets&table=hesscat& GET text/xml 180 99999 true 81.25916667 -69.64416667 0.25 https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/xamin/vo/tap https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/W3Browse/getvotable.pl?name=hesscat GET text/xml https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/W3Browse/w3query.pl?tablehead=name=heasarc_hesscat&Action=More+Options&Action=Parameter+Search&ConeAdd=1 GROUND-BASED 0.25 Gamma-ray public hesscat HESS (High Energy Stereoscopic System) Source Catalog name Source Designation meta.id;meta.main char nullable ra Right Ascension degree pos.eq.ra;meta.main double nullable dec Declination degree pos.eq.dec;meta.main double nullable max_flux Maximum Flux (Crab) Crab phot.flux;em.gamma;stat.max double nullable angular_radius Angular Radius of Source (arcmin) arcmin phys.angSize;src double nullable source_of_month Source of Month Link(s) meta.ref.url char nullable bii Galactic Latitude degree pos.galactic.lat double nullable alt_names Counterpart or Other Designations meta.id char nullable ref_source Publication Reference for Source meta.ref char nullable lii Galactic Longitude degree pos.galactic.lon double nullable "__x_ra_dec" System unit vector column double nullable "__y_ra_dec" System unit vector column double nullable "__z_ra_dec" System unit vector column double nullable "__row" System index column char nullable