Poster Abstract

P10.35 Aleksandar Shulevski (Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy)

Theme: Data processing pipelines

The AARTFAAC-12 calibration and imaging pipeline

The Amsterdam-ASTRON Radio Transient Facility And Analysis Center (AARTFAAC) is a dense aperture array comprised of the twelve center-most LOFAR stations. It correlates individual dipoles (in low band, LBA, mode), or tiles (in HBA mode). When operating in the LBA mode, it has a field of view spanning the entire sky, centered at zenith, with a synthesized PSF size of 10 to 15 arcminutes.

We describe the processing pipeline used to calibrate (in offline mode) the LBA data streaming from the AARTFAAC correlator. The pipeline is based on the existing and robust LOFAR data reduction environment adapted to the instrument characteristics. The pipeline will evolve towards a real-time pipeline, which raises significant computational challenges; we elaborate some of them. We also give a brief overview of the final data products and highlight how they enable our current and prospective science cases: Galactic, cosmology, space weather and transient studies.