Radio Telescope Data Center

Resources for Radio Astronomers

Astronomical observations, particularly those performed by large observatories, require special planning and good timing. For that reason, it’s good to archive the data collected during a given observation, for researchers to use later. The RTDC is designed to make astronomical data available from several CfA-managed observatories, as well as certain analyzed data sets.

The RTDC’s archives include data from three major facilities: the Submillimeter Array (SMA) in Hawaii; the CfA Millimeter-wave Telescopes (MWT) located in Massachusetts and Chile; and the now-decommissioned Antarctic Submillimeter Telescope and Remote Observatory (AST/RO). RTDC also provides software packages and data-processing support for the National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), and Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA).