User Parameters - Preparation of the Science field data

These parameters govern the pre-processing needed for the science field, to split by beam, flag, apply the bandpass (although none of the parameters listed here relate to that), and average to continuum resolution.

The splitting is done by beam, and optionally by particular scans and/or fields (where the latter are selected on the basis of the FIELD NAME in the MS). The flagging is done in the same manner as for the calibrator observation.

The averaging scale defaults to 54 channels, resulting in a 1MHz-resolution MS that can be imaged with cimager, although this averaging scale can be changed by the user.

Variable	Default	Parset equivalent	Description
DO_SPLIT_SCIENCE	true	none	Whether to split out the given beam from the science MS
DO_FLAG_SCIENCE	true	none	Whether to flag the (splitted) science MS
DO_APPLY_BANDPASS	true	none	Whether to apply the bandpass calibration to the science observation
DO_AVERAGE_CHANNELS	true	none	Whether to average the science MS to continuum resolution
SCAN_SELECTION_SCIENCE	no default (see description)	scans (mssplit (Measurement Splitting/Averaging Utility))	This allows selection of particular scans from the science observation. If not provided, no scan selection is done (all scans are included in the output MS).
FIELD_SELECTION_SCIENCE	no default (see description)	fields (mssplit (Measurement Splitting/Averaging Utility))	This allows selection of particular FIELD NAMEs from the science observation. If not provided, no field selection is done.
MS_BASE_SCIENCE	scienceObservation_beam%b.ms	none	Base name for the science observation measurement set after splitting. The wildcard %b will be replaced by the beam number (scienceObservation_beam0.ms etc).
MS_SCIENCE_AVERAGE	no default (see description)	dataset (cimager)	The name of the averaged measurement set that will be imaged by the continuum imager. Provide this if you want to skip the bandpass calibration and averaging steps (perhaps you’ve already done them). The wildcard %b, if present, will be replaced with the beam number. If not provided, the averaged MS name will be derived from MS_BASE_SCIENCE, with ”.ms” replaced with “_averaged.ms”.
CHAN_RANGE_SCIENCE	“1-16416”	channel (mssplit (Measurement Splitting/Averaging Utility))	Range of channels in science observation (used in splitting and averaging). This must (for now) be the same as CHAN_RANGE_1934.
NUM_CHAN_TO_AVERAGE	54	stman.tilenchan (mssplit (Measurement Splitting/Averaging Utility))	Number of channels to be averaged to create continuum measurement set. Also determines the tile size when creating the MS.
FLAG_THRESHOLD_DYNAMIC_SCIENCE	4.0	amplitude_flagger.threshold amplitude_flagger.integrateSpectra.threshold (cflag (Flagging Utility))	Dynamic threshold applied to amplitudes when flagging science field data [sigma]
FLAG_THRESHOLD_AMPLITUDE_SCIENCE	0.2	amplitude_flagger.high (cflag (Flagging Utility))	Second amplitude threshold applied when flagging science field data [hardware units - before calibration]
ANTENNA_FLAG_SCIENCE	“”	selection_flagger.<rule>.antenna (cflag (Flagging Utility))	Allows flagging of antennas or baselines. For example, to flag out the 1-3 baseline, set this to “ak01&&ak03” (with the quote marks). See documentation for further details on format.