ALMA Data Handling Workshop

9-12 February 2016 - Area della Ricerca Bologna, Italy

The Italian node of the European ALMA Regional Center is pleased to announce a 1.5-day workshop on to the archive activity and the imaging pipeline in Bologna on the 24th-25th of January dedicated to members of the ARC network. We would like to discuss with all the people in the European ARC network about the archive-related on-going activities and the tools and programs that are being developed in its framework. To achieve most of these purposes the imaging pipeline plays a crucial role. A few contributed talks on related topics or archive mining science programs could be allocated.

Program

The preliminary agenda is the following

-⁠Morning Jan 24th

 session 1:  archive statistics, on-going activities and development plan
       * Status of the archive, development plan and open issues (what is needed to set the stage)
       * The ALMA Re-Imaging development study: overview of its needs and purpose (Marcella)
       * Contributed talks
       * Short discussion session: initial collection of participation to archive-related activities

-⁠Afternoon Jan 24th

  session 2: tools for the archive: pipeline et al.
       * Description of the imaging pipeline (John Hibbard)
       * Demonstration of PL features and products 
       * Tests of pipeline applicability to the archive data (Felix)
       * The keyword filler program (Elisabetta)
       * Discussion session (wish list of keywords, interaction pipeline-archive-filler-AQUA, definition of quality=science-readiness of PL products)

-⁠Morning Jan 25th

   session 3⁠ (guided  discussion, chair: Marcella, Felix)
       * contributed talks
       * To do list for the archive  (re-⁠imaging et al...)
       * Management issues for re-imaging activities (actions, quality control, communications, products, future meetings)

Registration

Please fill the form on the webpage by the 10th of January

Venue, Logistics & contacts

The workshop will take place in the IRA Seminar Room at the 4th floor of the IRA institute.

The Institute of Radioastronomy is located in the CNR Research Area in Bologna. It can be reached by following the directions given here.
A selection of hotels in Bologna can be found in this list.

If you have questions, please contact the Italian ARC :

almadata2016@ira.inaf.it

Instructions for the hands-on sessions

During the hands-on sessions we will try to use the hardware and software facilities available at the ARC node. However, we request the participants to:

• bring their own laptop to access via ssh to the ARC cluster (linux or mac)

• download from the website https://launchpad.net/apsynsim/trunk/1.2b the file for the software APSYNSIM 1.2b in the version suited for your own operative system and verify that it is working properly

• download the latest version of CASA (4.5.0) from the website http://casa.nrao.edu/casa_obtaining.shtml install it on the laptop and verify that it is working properly. Older versions of CASA might not be suitable for the data that we will be using and will be slower than the last one, so please upgrade to this version if you have already a CASA version installed. Notice that it will be necessary only as a backup in case of malfunctioning of the ARC cluster or of the web links. You will soon receive further instructions on the download of the data that will be used as backup.

Please contact us for any problem.