Radio Interferometry SS 2020 (astro8404)
Dr. Lydia Moser, Dr. Stefanie Mühle, Dr. Alvaro Sánchez-Monge, Prof. Dr. Frank BertoldiCourse Material
Important note: The following lecture material is only intended for the personal use of the registered participants and may therefore be encrypted with a password. By accessing the material, whether encrypted or not, you agree that you won't share the material or the password with anyone not registered for this course and that you won't make the files or the password available online.
Material for the lecture part
Introductory Videos (Cycle 8 Proposal Preparation Support)
Introduction to Radio Interferometry, part 0
Introduction to Radio Interferometry, part 1
Introduction to Radio Interferometry, part 2
Introduction to Radio Interferometry, part 3
Introduction to Radio Interferometry, part 4
Introduction to Radio Interferometry, part 5
Introduction to Radio Interferometry, part 6
Introduction to Radio Interferometry, examples
Introduction to Radio Interferometry (videos)
Data reduction 2 (Tsys, WVR) - latest version
Data reduction 2 (Tsys, WVR) - what to check for
Data reduction 3a (Bandpass, updated on 10 June)
Data reduction 3b (Flux, updated on 10 June)
Data reduction 4 (Phase) - checks
Data reduction 5 (Inspection) - how to
Data reduction 8 (Data analysis)
Special applications: Polarization
Special applications: Self-calibration
Special applications: Data combination
Material for the hands-on part
For those new to Linux and command-line computing, there are a number of free introductory tutorials available online. A rather concise one that covers the most important basics in the first 5 chapters (~40 minutes to read) can be found here.
If you would like to check your Linux skills, you are welcome to do this small exercise on arc3 or any other Linux system. The files to be downloaded can be found here: FTP upload instructions and ex1.tar.gz
exercise 2: first_script.py
script for calibration, week 1
plot of antenna positions (lecture data)
script for calibration, week 2
script for calibration, week 3
script for calibration, week 4
script for calibration, week 5
Data
The lecture data set is the data set that will be used during the hands-on work in class.
The exam data set is the data set for the milestones and the presentation/paper. Each participant taking this course for credit needs to work on this data set on their own and to submit their material for the milestones. Participants not taking the course for credit are also welcome to work on this data set and submit material in order to get feedback on their progress.
The local participants will find a copy of the two data sets in their project accounts. The remote participants are cordially invited to download the data to their own machines:
Milestones
During the course, there will be three milestones that will help you to get your course work done in good time. If you take this course for credit, you are expected to hand in certain products of your data reduction by the due date of each milestone. If you do not take this course for credit, but would like us to check your progress, you are welcome to hand in material as well. The anticipated deadlines are 25 May, 29 June, and 13 July.
Milestone 1 went online on 11 May and had a due date of 25 May. Milestone 2 went online on 15 June with a deadline of 29 June. Milestone 3 is online since 30 June and was due on 13 July. Please note that on request of the course participants, the deadline for Milestone 3 has been extended to 27 July 23:59 CEST! As a consequence, the upload options have changed. Please download the revised version of Milestone 3.
Guidelines for submitting material via ftp
Milestone 1 --- Feedback on Milestone 1
Milestone 2 (version of 16 June 2020) --- Revised schedule and feedback on Milestone 2
Milestone 3 (revised version, 03 July 2020) --- Feedback on Milestone 3
Literature
Synthesis Imaging in Radio Astronomy II, ASP Conference Series, V. 180, 1998, Editors: Taylor, Carilli, Perley
Interferometry and Synthesis in Radio Astronomy (Wiley 2001), by Thompson, Moran, Swenson
Essential Radio Astronomy
astro841: Radio Astronomy, graduate-level course at Bonn university
ALMA Cycle 8 Proposer's Guide
ALMA Cycle 8 Technical Handbook
Software
Throughout this course, we will use the Common Astronomy Software Applications package (CASA) for the reduction and analysis of our interferometric data. The main source of information related to CASA is the CASA homepage.
In class, we will use the CASA release 5.6.1. Local participants will have the option to use a server with this CASA version already installed. Remote participants who want to participate in the hands-on exercises are kindly requested to download and install CASA on one of their local machines. Detailed installation instructions are available here.
The official documentation for the CASA release 5.6 is available through this link. A pdf version of the CASA cookbook (for an older release) can be found here. Further documentation is available in the form of CASA Guides.