The primary objective of the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) node of the All-Sky Virtual Observatory (ASVO) is to provide national and international researchers with seamless access to different MWA data products via online services and tools. The node aims to maximise the benefits of the MWA data, enforce a high level of provenance and completeness of meta-data, and protect data access rights.
In this pilot phase, only raw, uncalibrated visibility sets are available, with options for averaging and converting to measurement sets or uvfits. In a future project, the aim is to enhance the service by including on-the-fly calibration of visibilities, in order to further reduce the barriers that radio astronomers face when processing and reducing MWA data.
The initial development stage to provide MWA visibility data as a pilot implementation has been funded from the Astronomy Data and Computing Services 2017 budget. This follows on from an AAL-funded MWA node requirement analysis and design study conducted in 2015. Further funding has been secured to expand upon the pilot in 2018/19.
The MWA-ASVO pilot is available for access at https://asvo.mwatelescope.org/