Third-Generation Calibrations for MeerKAT Observation

Abstract

Superclusters and galaxy clusters offer a wide range of astrophysical science topics with regards to studying the evolution and distribution of galaxies, intra-cluster magnetization mediums, cosmic ray accelerations and large scale diffuse radio sources all in one observation. Recent developments in new radio telescopes and advanced calibration software have completely changed data quality that was never possible with old generation telescopes. Hence, radio observations of superclusters are a very promising avenue to gather rich information of a large-scale structure (LSS) and their formation mechanisms. These newer wide-band and wide field-of-view (FOV) observations require state-of-the-art data analysis procedures, including calibration and imaging, in order to provide deep and high dynamic range (DR) images with which to study the diffuse and faint radio emissions in supercluster environments. Sometimes, strong point sources hamper the radio observations and limit the achievement of a high DR. In this paper, we have shown the DR improvements around strong radio sources in the MeerKAT observation of the Saraswati supercluster by applying newer third-generation calibration (3GC) techniques using CubiCal and killMS software. We have also calculated the statistical parameters to quantify the improvements around strong radio sources. This analysis advocates for the use of new calibration techniques to maximize the scientific returns from new-generation telescopes.

New Window on the Radio Emission from Galaxies, Clusters and Cosmic Web—Conference Summary

“…Concerning this topic, he showed the results obtained applying newer third-generation calibration techniques using CubiCal and killMS software on the MeerKAT observations of the Saraswati supercluster. This analysis advocates for the use of new calibration techniques to maximize the scientific return from new-generation telescopes [3].…”

Multi-core multi-node parallelization of the radio interferometric imaging pipeline DDFacet

“…A new generation of calibration and imaging algorithms, also called the 3rd generation of calibration and imaging [18], is implemented in DDFacet 2 (Direction Dependent Facet) framework to compensate and correct the DDEs. This paper presents the first two-level parallelization paradigm for the DDFacet imager to distribute the computation of observation over multi-core and multi-node.…”