WSClean Version 2.0

Released 2016-11-04

Summary: This version adds baseline-based averaging, a feature that can improve the computational performance of imaging. Two other new features are -auto-threshold: using a threshold relative to the noise level; and -continue to start off where a previous deconvolution finished. Furthermore, quite a lot of small bugs were fixed.

New features:

  • Baseline-based averaging ) (SF #85).

  • Option -continue to continue a previous run (SF #79).

  • Option -auto-threshold to calculate the threshold from the residual noise level.

  • Option -spws to select which bands to image (SF #83).

  • Primary beam correction for MF image. Primary beam corrected versions of the residual and model images are saved too (SF #82, requested by T. Shimwell).

  • Option -simulate-noise to perform a noise-only simulation.

  • Connection to the Image Domain Gridder (IDG) is finished, testing continues.

  • Cleaned up FITS keywords, added keyword ‘WSCNORMF’ to allow easier PS normalization (SF #75).

  • WSClean unit tests are now shipped in the distribution and can be run with ‘make check’.

Fixes:

  • Use no cleaning border when a trimmed size is specified (SF #81).

  • Frequency headers in FITS file were wrong for datasets with multiple spectral windows (reported by R. van Weeren).

  • Channel width not set in fits if input has 1 channel (SF #87, reported by S. Bourke).

  • Incorrect frequency headers in PSFs (SF #93).

  • Incorrect frequency headers when imaging multi-spw sets (SF #90, reported by R. van Weeren).

  • Fitting of MFS image fails when highest frequency is flagged (reported by K. Emig).

  • Fix for imaging sets with reversed channels, which seems common for Miriad sets (Reported by L. Pratley).

  • Adding error message when requesting joined channels but not requesting more than one output channel (suggested by F. de Gasperin).

  • Solving bad deconvolution accuracy when single polarizations are flagged.

  • Improved speed of convolving the model with the restoring beam.

  • LOFAR beam did not use the right ra,dec in the first instance of beam creation.

  • Update help of -beamsize, -beamshape and -theoreticbeam.

  • Make sure that primary beam is not updated faster than the integration time (Reported by A. Nilsson).

  • Fixed crash when applying beam on multi-channel set

  • Fixed compilation of the ‘operator’ library interface for connecting with custom deconvolution algorithms.

  • Enabled fast math for gridder (although no significant change in speed).

  • Fixed compilation on a Mac.

  • Better validation and error repporting of input.

  • Some refactoring.