[ASA] Public release of Murchison Widefield Array data

[Steven Tingay]

Dear Colleagues,

The Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) is one of three Square Kilometre Array
(SKA) precursor telescopes and is the only SKA precursor for the low
frequency SKA to be built in Western Australia.  The MWA is a 128 element
interferometer operating between 80 and 300 MHz, with superb imaging
characteristics (especially for very low surface brightness radio emission)
and an angular resolution of ~2 arcminutes.

The MWA has operated for two years thus far and has collected almost 6
petabytes of data over a wide range of science programs.  The data are
stored at the Pawsey Centre in Perth.

Thus far, approximately 40 publications have been produced from MWA data,
accessible from the MWA ADS library:

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-abs_connect?library&libname=MWA&libid=4dfe953c00

Under the MWA Data Access policy (
http://mwatelescope.org/images/documents/2012.08.15_MWA_data_access_policy_approved.pdf),
MWA data collected under Open Access, Guaranteed Time, and Director's
Discretionary allocations become public after proprietary periods elapse.

MWA data thus started to become publicly available earlier this year.
Following preparatory work by the MWA Operations Team and management, we
are now in a position to systematically advertise the publicly available
data to the world.

A statement on the MWA website describes the data that are public and the
methods that can be used to discover and retrieve available MWA datasets of
interest.  The statement resides at:

http://mwatelescope.org/astronomers/public-data-release

This page also contains links to information referred to in the statement.

The public release of MWA data represents a significant milestone for the
MWA project and for the community in the lead-up to the final design and
construction of the low frequency SKA.  The public availability of MWA data
gives astronomers from around the world easy access to data from an SKA
precursor, for the purposes of student and postdoctoral training,
extraction of astrophysics (especially as a complement to data from other
instruments/wavebands), and for gaining familiarity with data from a next
generation low frequency interferometer.

If there are any questions regarding the public release of MWA data, they
can be directed to the MWA Director, Steven Tingay (s.tingay at curtin.edu.au).

Regards,
Steven

-- 
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Professor Steven Tingay

Director, Science and Operations
Curtin Institute of Radio Astronomy

Director, Murchison Widefield Array

Director
ICRAR

Department of Imaging and Applied Physics
Curtin University of Technology
Bentley, Western Australia
Australia

Street address:
Brodie Hall building
1 Turner Ave
Technology Park
Bentley 6102
Western Australia

Email:  s.tingay at ivec.org OR s.tingay at curtin.edu.au

WWW: http://astronomy.curtin.edu.au

Phone: +61 (0)8 9266 3516

Mobile: +61 (0)401 103635
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