Getting Started in CASA
From CASA Guides
Installing CASA
See the CASA Primer for installation instructions for common OSs.
Installing CASA on Ubuntu
The following method worked for Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty).
- Download the tarball appropriate for your Linux distribution (from https://svn.cv.nrao.edu/casa/linux_distro/).
- Install to /usr/local/bin/CASA (or substitute your own directory).
sudo mkdir /usr/local/bin/CASA
sudo mv casapy-24.0.8115-001-64b.tar.gz /usr/local/bin/CASA # substitute the appropriate tarball here
cd /usr/local/bin/CASA
sudo tar zxvf casapy-24.0.8115-001-64b.tar.gz
- Add the following environment variable to your .bashrc (or the equivalent command for your preferred shell startup script).
export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin/CASA/casapy-24.0.8115-001-64b
- Test it out!
source ~/.bashrc # or open a new terminal
casapy
Starting CASA
Once installed, you can start CASA using the command "casapy"
## From a UNIX shell prompt
casapy
Note that, by convention, UNIX-level commands will be commented out so to facilitate parsing these pages into CASA scripts.
Listing Available Commands and Tools
# From within CASA
tasklist()
A more exhaustive summary can be obtained as follows.
taskhelp
Some commands are hidden away as methods under various objects. For example, to take a look at options under the imager object
help im
Notice that the method mem appears here, under help, but not under tasklist.
Getting Help on a Command
Let's get some exhaustive help on clean.
# From within CASA
help clean
This method is OK, and perhaps the following method is better.
# From within CASA
pdoc clean
Additional Tips
- When you started CASA, it gave you a lot of useful information. But now you've been mucking around for a while, and that info is lost. How do you get it back? Just rerun the startup screen.
startup
--Jack Gallimore 14:42, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
