2 Aug 22: Dénes et al. has been accepted for publication in A&A.
Python code to generate a schedule for Apertif driftscans.
The program reads the Apertif beam pattern from a .txt file in ancillary/ and creates a drift scan schedule for a user specified calibrator and time**, and user specified number of drifts per beam***.
The properties of the Apertif beams derived from driftscans are described in:
Dénes, H., Hess, K. M., Adams, E. A. K., et al., "Characterising the Apertif primary beam response", accepted to A&A
The code used for modeling the Apertif compound beams from the driftscan autocorrelations can be found here.
The code requires Python 3.
Python dependencies can be installed with:
pip install -r requirements.txt
Fork to your own repository and do a git clone (nothing fancy).
$ python3 aperdrift.py -h
usage: aperdrift.py [-h] [-d DRIFTS_PER_BEAM] [-c CALIB] [-s STARTTIME_UTC] [-o OUTPUT] [-v]
Make a driftscan schedule for the Apertif imaging surveys.
optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-d DRIFTS_PER_BEAM, --drifts_per_beam DRIFTS_PER_BEAM
Specify the number of drifts per beam line (default: 1).
1 & even numbers drift through bm00.
-c CALIB, --calib CALIB
Specify the calibrator. (default: 3C147).
-s STARTTIME_UTC, --starttime_utc STARTTIME_UTC
The start time in ** UTC ** ! - format 'YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS' (default: '2019-04-25 16:00:00').
-o OUTPUT, --output OUTPUT
Specify the root of output csv and png files (default: CALname_driftDATE_temp.csv.)
-v, --verbose If option is included, print time estimate for several drift combos.
The program creates:
- a csv file formatted in the manner of an Apertif scheduling parameter file,
- a png file of the driftscan layout.
** The program will make an observing schedule for any calibrator/time combination. If a calibrator is not actually above the observing horizon (HA = +/-6 hours), it will throw a warning but still write the csv file.
*** Number of drifts per beam is an imprecise description. It really means the number of drifts between beam centers + 1 (counting one of the beam centers).
- aperdrift v1.0.0
- Released 13 May 2022
Kelley M. Hess and Helga Dénes
When referring to aperdrift in publications, please cite both the Zenodo DOI for the code, and the following paper:
Dénes, H., Hess, K. M., Adams, E. A. K., et al., "Characterising the Apertif primary beam response", accepted to A&A
© 2022 Kelley M. Hess
This programme is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This programme is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but without any warranty; without even the implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this programme. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.