Daily Image
22-10-2008
WoW: Westerbork on the Web, a database of reduced WSRT data
| Submitter: | Lilith Grassi & Raffaella Morganti |
| Description: | To facilitate more use of WSRT data, a new web service, called WoW (for Westerbork on the Web) has been put together and made available to the astronomical community. Unlike other public archives of radio data, it contains reduced data and other data products derived from the observations, such as velocity fields or list of detected objects. Because reduced data, instead of raw data, are available, it makes it easier for other users (including non-experts in radio astronomy) to work with WSRT data. For many astronomers, calibrating radio data is still a significant hurdle. WoW already contains spectral-line and continuum data associated with a number of single objects, as well as from several surveys. At present, the WoW includes some of the "WSRT classics" such as WHISP (Westerbork observations of neutral Hydrogen in Irregular and SPiral galaxies), WENSS (Westerbork Northern Sky Survey) as well as the results of more recent programmes like Westerbork SINGS, SAURON and several large-area continuum surveys (Bootes, HDF etc.). WoW makes all these surveys easily accessible. Half the number of papers written on VLA data are based on data taken from the VLA archive, so we hope that WoW will increase the output of the WSRT. WoW contains calibrated images and datacubes while it also includes derived data such as total HI images and velocity fields. For large-area surveys, it presents the images and tables of extracted sources. It also has an image-cutout service that allows users to select a small subset of a data set. All tables and databases can be searched using cone searches. WoW can be used interactively, but is also a fully VO compliant web service. The WoW service has a download and upload facilities (although this is still restricted to internal users). The latter allows to expand the available database. We encourage everybody with WSRT datasets that are published, to include them in the WoW (where also a full description of the original data/paper(s) and the full acknowledgements of whom provide the data are given). WoW is available under http://www.astron.nl/wow Feel free to send comments/suggestions to Lilith Grassi (grassi@astron.nl) or Raffaella Morganti. |
| Copyright: | ASTRON |
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