ALMA Data Handling Workshop

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

The Italian node of the European ALMA Regional Center is pleased to announce a 4-day ALMA data analysis workshop, with the aim to assist users in learning how to (re)process ALMA data, from raw data to the production of calibrated images and data analysis.

The program will include lectures to introduce the key concepts in the calibration and imaging of interferometric data, and hands-on sessions which will demonstrate their application in the Common Astronomy Software Applications (CASA) package.

Participants will be requested to work on their own laptops. Details on CASA versions and data downloads will be communicated later to the registered participants.


The workshop is open to researchers, post-docs and students interested in working with ALMA data, either their own or taken from the archive. Novice users are welcome!

Accessing the ARC cluster

  • The folders used for the school will be available up to Feb 29th. To access the ARC cluster do ssh -X almauserN@scheduler.ira.inaf.it . To work remotely on the school datasets (in scuola/) we suggest to create two individual folders and copy all the files you need into them.
  • If you want to copy files from the cluster to your own machine, you need to type: scp almauserN@storage.alma.inaf.it:scuola/nomefile .
  • To fix the CASA viewer problem in the spectral line panel, Linux users can copy this file into their .config/NRAO/CASA/Spectral Profiler.conf file.

Program

  • February 9th
14:00 14:15 Welcome
14:15 15:30  Introduction to Interferometry 
15:30 16:45  ALMA
16:45 17:00 coffee break
17:00 17:15 Hands-on: Sensitivity Calculator
17:15 18:00 Hands-on: UV plane visualization  additional models
  • February 10th
 9:30 10:00  CASA introduction
10:00 10:45  Alma archive and data tree
10:45 11:15 coffee break
11:15 12:00 Hands on exploring the archive  Hands on instructions
12:00 13:00 Calibration- Introduction 
13:00 Lunch break
14:00 15:30 Hands-on: Checking the calibration results with plotms  plotms instructions 
15:30 16:00 coffee break
16:00 18:00 Hands-on: QA2 report/weblog  tiny dataset  qa manual  weblog
  • February 11th
 9:30 10:30 Imaging - Introduction
 10:30 11:30 Hands-on: Imaging script_NGC1614 
 11:30 12:00 coffee break
 12:00 13:00 Hands-on: Imaging
 13:00 Lunch break
 14:00 15:30 Hands-on: Data products analysis  Analysis script
 15:30 16:00 coffee break
 16:00 18:00 Hands-on: Data products analysis 
  • February 12th
  9:30 10:00 Self calibration
 10:00 11:00 Hands-on: self calibration
 11:00 11:30 coffee break
 11:30 12:30 Hands-on: self calibration File:Selfcal script4school.py



The trainers will be Nuria Marcelino, Marcella Massardi, Arturo Mignano, Rosita Paladino, and Kazi Rygl, members of the Italian Node of the ALMA Regional Centre.

Participants

View the list of registered participants here (updated to February 5, 2016)

Registration

Registration has closed on December 15th, 2015.

No fee is required. For logistical reasons, a maximum of 40 participants can be accepted, on a "first come first serve” basis.

We have reached the maximum number of participants, and have a short waiting list. If any of the registered participants cannot be present, they are kindly requested to inform the organizers as soon as possible, so that their place can be taken by someone else.

Venue, Logistics & contacts

The workshop will take place in the CNR Research Area in Bologna, room 216 (main hall, first floor).

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 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.