N891 simdata (CASA 3.3)

↵ Simulating Observations in CASA

A new version of this page exists for CASA 3.3: N891 simdata (CASA 3.3).

Nearby edge-on spiral

Roughly modeled after NGC891

This article is under construction. Watch this space!

- mostly correct, but probably not very thoroughly explained. Updated for CASA 3.1 (simdata2->simdata)

• model origin: Milky Way 13CO from the Galactic Ring Survey on the 14m FCRAO

• I binned the cube to coarser velocity resolution in order to speed the simulation. the fits file is grs-12kms.fits

• units: K - first convert to flux surface brightness

Jy/Sr = 2x10²³ k T / λ², = 4x10⁸T at 110GHz.

now we need to decide if this model data will work at the desired pixel scale

• the GRS resolution of 40" at ~10kpc is 0.04" at 10Mpc, so we should be able to do a simulation of observing at ~0.1-0.2". The resolution plot () indicates that for ALMA at 100GHz, configuration 20 is appropriate.
• if we intend to set cell=0.04arcsec in simdata, then the cube needs to be multiplied by

4x10⁸ * (.04/206265)² = 1.4x10^-5 to obtain Jy/pixel. The cube peaks at ~20K, so we can perform the simulation with inbright=3e-4, which should yield a peak of ~1mJy/bm.

will we be dominated by the noise in the input model?

• input noise ~150mK or S/N~20, so at our scaled intensity, ~0.05 mJy/bm. The exposure time calculator says that ALMA will achieve 2.5mJy/bm in 2 hours for the input 212m/s channel width (0.075MHz), so the noise in the input model should not affect our results.
• We do have a sensitivity issue though - if we decrease the spectral resolution by a factor of 6 (bin the input channels in some other program - simdata will know how to do that in the future but not yet), and plan for 3 8-hr tracks, then the sensitivity calculator suggests that we'll get <0.25mJy rms, or S/N>10 per beam. Rather than simulate 3 days of observing, I'll increase inbright by sqrt(3) and simulate one 8 hour track.

setup:

• the ALMA 12m primary beam is 50" so we'd space a mosaic by 25", but the model cube has 326x357 pixels, or 13 arcsec with our small pixels. That's a lot smaller than the primary beam, so it doesn't matter much what output image size we ask for.
• there are 659 channels in the input cube, but as noted above we want to bin those to 109 channels of 1.2 km/s each.

here are the simdata inputs :

taskname = "simdata" project = "n891d"

modifymodel = T

skymodel = "grs-12kms.fits"

incenter = "110.1777GHz"

inwidth = "-.468MHz"

inbright = "1.4e-4"

indirection = 'J2000 7h00m34 -23d03m00'

incell = "0.2arcsec"

setpointings = T

integration = "300s"

pointingspacing = "25arcsec"

mapsize = '60arcsec'

graphics = "both"

verbose = True

overwrite = True

antennalist = "alma;0.5arcsec"

predict=T

totaltime = "3600s"

image=T

here's the cube with the simdata's scaling and World Coordinate System:
and a spectral profile in the box marked in green

Sample results:

Input:	Predict:
Image:	Analyze: