Apercal - The Apertif calibration pipeline
Artikel i vetenskaplig tidskrift, 2022
Apertif (APERture Tile In Focus) is one of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) pathfinder facilities. The Apertif project is an upgrade to the 50-year-old Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope (WSRT) using phased-array feed technology. The new receivers create 40 individual beams on the sky, achieving an instantaneous sky coverage of 6.5 square degrees. The primary goal of the Apertif Imaging Survey is to perform a wide survey of 3500 square degrees (AWES) and a medium deep survey of 350 square degrees (AMES) of neutral atomic hydrogen (up to a redshift of 0.26), radio continuum emission and polarisation. Each survey pointing yields 4.6 TB of correlated data. The goal of Apercal is to process this data and fully automatically generate science ready data products for the astronomical community while keeping up with the survey observations. We make use of common astronomical software packages in combination with Python based routines and parallelisation. We use an object oriented module-based approach to ensure easy adaptation of the pipeline. A Jupyter notebook based framework allows user interaction and execution of individual modules as well as a full automatic processing of a complete survey observation. If nothing interrupts processing, we are able to reduce a single pointing survey observation on our five node cluster with 24 physical cores and 256 GB of memory each within 24 h keeping up with the speed of the surveys. The quality of the generated images is sufficient for scientific usage for 44% of the recorded data products with single images reaching dynamic ranges of several thousands. Future improvements will increase this percentage to over 80%. Our design allowed development of the pipeline in parallel to the commissioning of the Apertif system.
Pipelines
Surveys
Image processing
Techniques
Data reduction
Telescopes
Författare
B. Adebahr
Ruhr-Universität Bochum
Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON)
R. Schulz
Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON)
T. J. Dijkema
Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON)
V. A. Moss
Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON)
The University of Sydney
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO)
A. R. Offringa
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON)
A. M. Kutkin
Russian Academy of Sciences
Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON)
J. M. van der Hulst
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
B. S. Frank
University of Cape Town
University of the Western Cape
South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO)
N. Vilchez
Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON)
J. Verstappen
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON)
E. K. Adams
Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON)
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
W.J.G. de Blok
University of Cape Town
Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON)
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
H. Dénes
Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON)
K. M. Hess
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON)
D. M. Lucero
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
R. Morganti
Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON)
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
T. Oosterloo
Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON)
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
D. J. Pisano
West Virginia University
Marianna Ivashina
Chalmers, Elektroteknik, Kommunikation, Antenner och Optiska Nätverk
W. van Cappellen
Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON)
L. Connor
Universiteit Van Amsterdam
Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON)
A. H.W.M. Coolen
Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON)
Sieds Damstra
Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON)
G. M. Loose
Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON)
Y. Maan
Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON)
F. M. Maccagni
Istituto nazionale di astrofisica (INAF)
Mika
Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON)
H. Mulder
Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON)
L. C. Oostrum
Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON)
Netherlands eScience Center
Universiteit Van Amsterdam
E. Orrú
Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON)
R. Smits
Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON)
D. Van Der Schuur
Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON)
J. van Leeuwen
Universiteit Van Amsterdam
Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON)
D. Vohl
Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON)
S. J. Wijnholds
Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON)
J. Ziemke
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON)
Astronomy and Computing
2213-1337 (ISSN)
Vol. 38 100514Ämneskategorier (SSIF 2011)
Annan data- och informationsvetenskap
Programvaruteknik
Mediateknik
DOI
10.1016/j.ascom.2021.100514