Local data reduction pipelines and other utilities

MERLIN AIPS PROCEDURE

The MERLIN AIPS procedure runs inside AIPS as a procedure allowing familiar inputs and interactive options, with default settings appropriate for MERLIN data.

Runfile containing MERLIN procedure (56kB).
HELP file for MERLIN procedure (24kB) accessed inside AIPS in the usual way.

Copy both files to a suitable directory, rename MERLIN.ehex to your AIPS user No. in ehex, set the RUNFIL environment (see MUG G.2.4 for how to set up a runfile), start AIPS and type

> run MERLIN
> inp MERLIN
> help MERLIN
> docrt 1; explain MERLIN

for various levels of help.

The normal input will be a single multi-source FITS file from tdproc but multiple FITS files or a file already in AIPS are options. Only one set of TARGET, ACAL, (optional) PACAL, (optional) PHSREF in the same configuration can be processed at one time. A rough amplitude scale should have been applied but further amplitude scaling and editing can be done in the procedure.

At present (August 2005) it can be used for single- or multi-channel continuum data and for the initial stages of spectral line data reduction, but in the latter case you should stop before target self-calibration or final datacube imaging and do these manually. It should work OK on 2004 and 2005 versions of AIPS; it is known to have problems with very old versions. It has not been tested at P band.

The procedure was written by Phil Diamond and modified by Anita Richards, please send feedback/complaints/suggestions to amsr@jb.man.ac.uk

Methanol (etc.) script

Experimental Parseltongue script for processing multi-source files e.g. methanol meth.py. Please read comments, consult Anita Richards. Feedback welcome - will be expanded soon.

If you want to use any of these scripts/tasks/programs etc. please consult the MERLIN staff.

AIPS scripts and runfiles for data reduction

The original pipeline must be run at Jodrell Bank.

PREPROCESSING SCRIPTS FOR DFILES INTERNAL USE ONLY

A version of the MERLIN Archive Runfile, MERLIN Archive Runfile (also see this overview), is available for user data reduction. This is especially suitable for processing many sources observed in identical configurations for which the same flux- and polarisation calibration sources can be used. This uses the local AIPS task LISTM if polarisation angle calibration is required, see below.

Local AIPS tasks for polarized data

LISTM (Andy Biggs, biggs@nfra.nl) is a variant of LISTR which inserts the apparent polarization angle in the AIPS header so that CLCOR can read the value and perform the appropriate corrections without human intervention.

MFQUV (Phil Diamond, pdiamond@jb.man.ac.uk) measures the Stokes Q U and V flux densities at the positions of Stokes I components in MF tables written by SAD.

Other utilities

Anita Richards (amsr@jb.man.ac.uk) has a suite of programs used to process the output of SAD for maser images.

This is a recipe to produce high-quality printable plots from AIPS. However as of 31DEC02 AIPS, this is probably easier using LWPL to generate colour postscript directly.