GLAST Data Access and Analysis Software

The scientific community will access the public GLAST data through the website of the GLAST Science Support Center (GSSC). For most data products the GSSC website will link to the NASA High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center's (HEASARC) Browse interface, which will actually serve the data. For example, data from the GLAST Burst Monitor (GBM) from a given burst will be packaged together and accessible through Browse. However, the photon data produced by the Large Area Telescope (LAT), GLAST's primary instrument, will require a customized GSSC interface. These photons will be detected over the LAT's large field-of-view, usually while the LAT is scanning the sky, and thus cannot be attributed to the observation of a particular object. Users will request all photons detected from a region on the sky over a specified time and energy range. This also means that analyzing data from the LAT will require sophisticated techniques. The GSSC will provide a suite of data analysis tools and libraries for use in analyzing the GLAST data. This software is being developed by the instrument teams with assistance from the GSSC to provide a solid and robust framework for interpreting and analyzing the GLAST data. Here we provide a short overview of the Standard Analysis Environment (SAE) software and the data products that will be served.