Common Astronomy Software Applications

CASA, the Common Astronomy Software Applications, is the primary data processing software for the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), and is often used also for other radio telescopes.

6.6.1 Release

CASA 6.6.1 can now be downloaded for general use. CASA 6.6.1 is based on CASA 6.6.0, and the downloadable tar-file includes the pipeline for ALMA Cycle 11 and the VLA.

Highlights:

  • getantposalma: new task to query ALMA antenna position web service and return list of antenna ITRF positions.

  • simalma: ALMA Cycle-11 configurations files were added.

  • polfromgain: new parameter minpacov to specify a minimum parallactic coverage threshold.

  • tec_maps: now consistent with new file-naming convention on remote CDDIS server.

  • ASDM: ASDM code has been synced with master copy generated by ALMA builds.

  • plotms: correlation selection supports standard Stokes parameters and polarization quantities.

In addition, a number of bugs were fixed.

CASA is being developed by an international consortium of scientists and software engineers based at the National Radio Astronomical Observatory (NRAO), the European Southern Observatory (ESO), the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ), and the Joint Institute for VLBI European Research Infrastructure Consortium (JIV-ERIC), under the guidance of NRAO.