ATOMIC DATA FROM THE IRON PROJECT .1. GOALS AND METHODS

The IRON Project has the goal of computing on a large scale electron excitation cross sections and rates of astrophysical and technological importance, using the most reliable procedures currently available. Radiative transition probabilities and photoionization cross sections not known from other sources e.g. from the Opacity Project, will also be presented. Although the major effort will be for ions of the iron-group elements, other ions of astrophysical interest will also be included. In this introductory paper models and procedures to be used are summarized and the approximations are discussed. As an example of our computational procedures, typical results for fine structure transitions involving electron collisions with Fe XVIII ions and radiative data from Fe XVII are presented.