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T.J. Cornwell (NRAO)
The Expanded Very Large Array (EVLA) was one of the major facility initiatives recommended by the Astronomy and Astrophysics Survey Committee of the NRC in its report, ``Astronomy and Astrophysics for the New Millennium.''
As part of the EVLA initiative, the NRAO plans to improve the data services offered to users of the EVLA. Currently, a user of the VLA is presented with a data tape containing the raw, observed visibility data. This may be reduced using software such as the AIPS package developed by NRAO or its successor the AIPS++ package developed by a consortium of radio observatories. Thus the onus is on the observer to do much of the standard processing needed to generate a scientifically useful image. In the EVLA, we plan to perform initial calibration and imaging of many observation types, and thus present the user with an initial image that will suffice for many scientific purposes. This is very similar to the goals for data processing on the Altacama Large Millimeter Array. We will describe the goals of and approaches to be used in the EVLA developments.
The planned improvement of data services is not just limited to the EVLA, but is part of a wider Data Management Initiative at the NRAO. We will describe the goals of this larger initiative and how it relates to the proposed National Virtual Observatory.
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: tcornwel@nrao.edu