my.NRAO.edu and the VLA archive - BHianca/VLA GitHub Wiki

Numbered steps to follow:

  1. Go to my.nrao.edu and create or login to your account.

  2. Navigate on the home screen to the link to access the archive - see screenshot. It is usually best practice to access the archive through your my.nrao account. Your account name should appear in the upper right. fig1

  3. Click on "Basic Search" and enter the proposal (project) code. The project code gets assigned from the submitted proposal and is the two digit year, followed by observing semester A or B, and then - XXX (i.e. 17A-248 means this observation proposal was submitted for the first half of the year 2017 or the A semester and was the 248th proposal). Then hit "Submit Query" near the bottom. Note - NRAO has a webpage with a hyperlink for additional information on how to download data.
    fig2

  4. You should find results on a page like below. First enter your email to get a link to download the data from an online NRAO repository. You can ignore the GBT and Historical VLA data area. It is probably best to make the measurement set or "MS" into a .tar directory for easy one file download of everything you need. Make sure to check the box to make a .tar file. You can spectral channel average now or later in CASA - for this tutorial we are not averaging the data at this stage, but that option is there. The specs of the data are shown such as this data was taken on May 30, 2017 when the VLA was in the C-config (which is the second most compact arrangement of antennas but see this tool https://public.nrao.edu/vla-configurations/). The data was collected in C, X, and S bands (see https://science.nrao.edu/facilities/vla/docs/manuals/oss2013B/performance/bands for conversion to wavelength in cm or GHz) and is publicly available - if it is private, you are unable to execute the download. There is an approximate one year proprietary period on VLA data for the PI. Click on "Get My Data" when ready to initiate download. fig3

  5. Now just confirm that you want to receive the link to the .tar file via email. Note the file size. This data took about 2.5 hours for me to download. You will need storage for this and probably about 2-3 times more capacity to reduce in CASA. fig4

  6. These pages are what you will see to finish getting the data. First, you will see the confirmation that the data is being sent. fig5 Then you wait to receive an email like this. fig6