CASA, the Common Astronomy Software Applications for Radio Astronomy
The CASA Team, Ben Bean, S. Bhatnagar, S. Castro, Jennifer L. Donovan, Bjorn Emonts, Enrique Garcia, Robert Garwood, K. Golap, Justo Antonio González Villalba, Pamela E. Harris, Yohei Hayashi, Josh Hoskins, Ming-Yu Hsieh, P. Jagannathan, Wataru Kawasaki, A. Keimpema, Mark Kettenis, J. A. López, Joshua Marvil, J. Masters, Andrew McNichols, David M. Mehringer, Renaud Miel, G. Moellenbrock, Federico Montesino Pouzols, Takeshi Nakazato, J. Ott, D. Petry, Martin Pokorný, Ryan Raba, Urvashi Rau, Darrell Schiebel, N. Schweighart, Srikrishna Sekhar, Kazuhiko Shimada, Des Small, Jan-Willem Steeb, Kanako Sugimoto, Ville Suoranta, T. Tsutsumi, Ilse van Bemmel, Marjolein Verkouter, Akeem Wells, Wei Xiong, Arpad Szomoru, Morgan Griffith, Brian Glendenning, J. Kern
Abstract
Abstract CASA, the Common Astronomy Software Applications, is the primary data processing software for the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), and is frequently used also for other radio telescopes. The CASA software can handle data from single-dish, aperture-synthesis, and Very Long Baseline Interferometery (VLBI) telescopes. One of its core functionalities is to support the calibration and imaging pipelines for ALMA, VLA, VLA Sky Survey, and the Nobeyama 45 m telescope. This paper presents a high-level overview of the basic structure of the CASA software, as well as procedures for calibrating and imaging astronomical radio data in CASA. CASA is being developed by an international consortium of scientists and software engineers based at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), the European Southern Observatory, the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, and the Joint Institute for VLBI European Research Infrastructure Consortium (JIV-ERIC), under the guidance of NRAO.