Prerequisites

Interferometric data

The interferometric (continuum/spectral line) data from GMRT can be analysed using NRAO’s Common Astronomy Software Applications (CASA) or Astronomical Image Processing System (AIPS). We will focus on the analysis using CASA in these tutorials.

CASA

You need to download and install CASA. It is important to read the CASA documentation in order to understand the details of the CASA tasks and the overall functioning of CASA. It will be useful to get familiar with the usage at the ipython prompt before starting the tutorials. The specific CASA version in which the tutorial was prepared is provided at the beginning of the individual tutorials.

Pulsar/Beam data

The pulsar/beam data are typically recorded using the phased-array (PA) and the incoherent-array (IA) observing modes of the GMRT. The format of the native beam data is same for both the PA and the IA observing modes. After a simple format conversion using SIGPROC/RFIClean, the native beam data from GMRT can be used with the publicly available softwares such as SIGPROC, PRESTO, DSPSR, etc. The tutorial will use data already converted to the SIGPROC filterbank format. The primary softwares needed for the tutorial are PRESTO, tempo2, and their dependencies.