Data products of the ALMA and NRAO archives

摘要

Radio astronomy archives present particular challenges due to the complexity of the data processing. New radio telescopes such as the Jansky-VLA and ALMA also have much larger data volumes than the previous generation of instruments, requiring large amounts of storage and processing. Here we describe the approach taken by NRAO towards making the data products of the VLA and ALMA available to our users. This includes traditional approaches of pipelining and imaging, and also on-demand server side processing, visualization and analysis. We discuss how the size of the image products is related to that of the visibility data, and how this places variable demands on the data flow from the telescope and its data center as configurations are changed throughout the year. Finally, we look ahead to the next generation of radio telescopes such as the SKA and ngVLA.