v0.7.0

This release includes some features for astrohack.

• General

  • Astrohack is now fully Black compliant
  • Astrohack now supports python versions 3.11, 3.12 and 3.13.
  • Astrohack now uses the toolviper set of configurations for testing and code coverage.
  • Astrohack now uses Numpy V>2.
  • Astrohack is now compatible with the latest releases of Dask.

• Holog:

  • holog now fits Zernike polynomials to the apertures before converting them to Stokes.
  • The Zernike polynomial fitting can be controlled by chosen the highest order of polynomials to be fitted using parameter zernike_n_order.
  • The highest order of Zernike polynomials that can be fitted is N = 10 (66 polynomial coefficients in total).
  • The Zernike polynomial fit can also be used for phase fitting, this new feature can be chosen by using the parameter phase_fit_engine.
  • Zernike polynomial phase fitting should be used with orders 2-4 as higher orders may start fitting structures in the aperture plane that are caused by the panels.
  • It is possible to retrieve the values of the fitted Zernike polynomial coefficients by using the image_mds method export_zernike_fit_results.
  • It is possible to plot the Zernike polynomial model along with the fitting results by using the image_mds method plot_zernike_model.
  • Both phase fitting engines are now almost fully covered by tests.
  • Perturbation phase fitting (classic AIPS like algorithm) now can deal with no square pixels or images.

v0.6.2

• General:

  • Fixed issues with problematic scape sequences.
  • Moved user documentation pages from the wiki to the readthedocs.
  • Misc improvements to readthedocs page.

• FITS Comparison tool:

  • Fixed bug caused by a typo.
  • Added new types of plot: Reference image plot and unresampled data plot.
  • Added statistics to the headers of all plots.
  • Created a function to extract RMS values from an FITSImage obj: rms_table_from_zarr_datatree.

• Panel:

  • Fixed a bug that prevented old files with no polarization state information from being opened.

v0.6.1

General Changes:

• Dropped support for Python 3.9 as the latest release of xarray drops support for this python version
• Added support for Python 3.12, this python version was not support by python-casacore for a long time but that is no longer the case.

Panel:

• Introduced a new parameter called exclude_shadows.
  • This parameter activates using a mask which also excludes the shadows caused by the quadrupole holding the secondary.

Image Comparison Tool:

• This release introduces a simple FITS comparison tool to gauge the differences between apertures taken at different epochs and software such as AIPS.

v0.6.0

This release includes the release of the Cassegrain ray Tracing tool.
More information about this tool can be seen at our readthedocs page:
astrohack.readthedocs.io

v0.5.11

This release bring a bug fix for locit:

• When a delay fit failed locit was crashing, there is now error trapping around the fitting routines giving out a warning when a fit fails.

v0.5.10

This is a patch release, that brings a bug fix to HOLOG:

• After the phase fitting process the phase corrections were subtracted from the phase image without wrapping the phase to the - $\pi$ to $\pi$ interval, this has now been fixed by the addition of phase wrapping at the end of the phase fitting process.
• A test has been added to panel to detect images from HOLOG that have been produced with astrohack versions previous to this one to trigger a phase wrapping of the input phase image before computing deviations.

v0.5.9

This release brings some improvements to LOCIT:

• It is now possible to use 'RL', 'LR', 'XY' and 'YX' to describe the polarization to be used, 'both' is still accepted as well.
• LOCIT no longer crash in the event of missing data, it will produce a warning instead.
• If all data for an antenna DDI combination is missing during processing due to filtering (e.g. low elevation data) LOCIT will now produce a warning.

v0.5.8

This release contains a few changes to locit, plus a new method for installing astrohack in NRAO machines.

• LOCIT:
  • Delay plots with the fitted delay model now display the delay model residuals.
  • Improved selection of X and Y limits on delay, and sky cover plots.
  • Table that contains position corrections now present station numbers and fit RMS in degrees.
  • Added a method to the position_mds called export_to_parminator to export locit results to a parminator file.
  • Changed formatting of values in the table that contains position corrections.
• Installation under a VENV:
  • Installation script.
  • CASA fringe fit and phase gain script for pre locit reduction.
  • LOCIT execution script.
  • post locit parminator export script
  • installation instructions on the wiki
  • Execution instructions on the wiki

v0.5.7

This release contains a miscellany of minor changes and a few bug fixes.

• extract_holog:
  • Corrected the time interpolation of pointing for the case in which the pointing table is sampled less frequently than the visibilities (pre 2021 VLA).
  • Changed test on needing to fix the pointing table to when there are no mapping antennas rather than using a date.
  • Changed the default of baseline_average_nearest parameter from 'all' to 1.
• locit:
  • Fixed the case where field_ids were taken from the negative phases but assumed to be the same as the positive phases which cause an access error due to array length.
  • Reference antenna is now always marked on the output table with antenna position corrections.
  • The antenna position corrections table is now printed when position_mds.export_locit_fit_results is called.
• Miscellanious:
  • Fixed the formatting of the API documentation in readthedocs for a few tasks where line breaks were causing a formatting breakdown.
  • Updated github workflows to use V4 artefacts rather than V3 artefacts.

v0.5.6

This release contains a series of minor improvements.

Panel:

• Amplitude cutoff based on noise maximum and threshold on excluding data.
• RMS in screw file is now always quoted in mm as well as the unit chosen.
• Antenna gain is now computed using the expected FWHM of the primary beam.

Extract_holog:

• It is now possible to exclude antennas that have bad data.

Miscelanious:

• Fixed a typo in notebooks referencing apply_mask, a defunct parameter of holog, that caused the notebooks to not complete execution.