Abstract

Image Resampling for the MWA

Stephen Ord (Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics)

Lincoln Greenhill, Daniel Mitchell, Randall Wayth

The Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) real-time calibration pipeline concludes with an image resampling step. This resampling transforms the image from a distorted instrument frame to a reference library pixelisation. The transformation removes the ionospheric distortion, and projects the image into a celestial coordinate frame, correcting the wide field distortion in the process. The MWA will not store visibilities, these resampled images form the basic data product of the array. We outline the method employed, discuss the robustness of the process as applied to simulated MWA observations and also investigate how the detrimental pixelisation effects can be mitigated by the addition of dithered snapshot images.

Mode of presentation: poster