AVICA Demos

Accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics

Automated VLBI pipeline in CASA

Uses minimal configuration to run blind-automated VLBI calibration. The demos below are the real terminal sessions.

AVICA

Automated VLBI pipeline in CASA

  1. 1 Installation

    The complete stack: AVICA, CASA and rPICARD — one script, reuses an existing rPICARD if it finds one.

    bash 
    $ curl -LsSf https://avikhagol.github.io/avica/install.sh | bash

  2. 2 Create configuration

    Point it at a folder of FITS files. Everything else resolves to sane defaults.

    bash 
    $ avica pipe config folder_for_fits=/path/to/fitsfile/folder

  3. 3 Run full pipeline

    Name the target and the FITS files, point at the config, and run.

    bash 
    $ avica pipe run \
    --fitsfilenames VLBA_VSN001024_file28.uvfits,VLBA_VSN001024_file29.uvfits,VLBA_VSN001024_file30.uvfits \
    --target 1309+555 \
    --configfile avica.inp

  4. Sample data

    No FITS files of your own? Grab the set used in the demos below.

    Download sample FITS-IDI dataset 
    $ url="https://cloud.ia.forth.gr/index.php/s/kiBDyJ7Wg97rtEC/download"
$ curl -L "$url" -o files.zip && unzip files.zip -d avica_test_data
$ avica pipe config folder_for_fits="$(readlink -f .)"/avica_test_data/for-demo-fitsfiles/

Under the hood, run end to end or named individually.

preprocess_fitsidi→fits_to_ms→avica_avg→avicameta_ms→avica_snr→avica_fill_input→avica_split_ms→rpicard

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avica

Before you start

What the demos assume

System
Ubuntu 18.04+, Debian 10+, or RHEL/CentOS 8+, with Python ≥ 3.9. The pipeline itself runs on Python 3.10.
Calibration backend
Demos 04–09 need working CASA and rPICARD installations. install.sh sets both up, or reuses an existing picard on your PATH.
Data
A VLBI FITS-IDI dataset (.uvfits). Demos 01–03 need no data at all — follow those on any machine. Grab the sample dataset above for 04–09.
Configuration
A single avica.inp file of key=value entries in your working directory. Demo 03 builds one from scratch.