AIPS: flagging bad data, calibration, etc

[Aziza]

i am trying to learn AIPS in preparation to doing research in radio astronomy. I know the basics of radio astronomy and that AIPS is used to reduce data and remove errors from images due to atmospheric disturbances, but I don't really know what kind of errors in the data I should be looking for...like how do I know to flag an antenna as bad? Why do I have to plot antenna temp vs time to see which antenna are bad? Why should phase vs UV distance be a straight line? Why are there so many different file names associated with radio images: uvfits, imfits, etc, what are the differences between them?

Can anyone suggest a good textbook or websites explaining these subjects? Basically my main subject of interest is, once I have some image data (downloaded from nrao archives for example), what should I do with it in AIPS?

 

[chemisttree]

i am trying to learn AIPS in preparation to doing research in radio astronomy. I know the basics of radio astronomy and that AIPS is used to reduce data and remove errors from images due to atmospheric disturbances, but I don't really know what kind of errors in the data I should be looking for...like how do I know to flag an antenna as bad? Why do I have to plot antenna temp vs time to see which antenna are bad?

Temperature affects sensitivity.

The most familiar type of radio telescope is the radio reflector consisting of a parabolic antenna--the so-called dish or filled-aperture telescope--which operates in the same manner as a television-satellite receiving antenna to focus the incoming radiation onto a small antenna referred to as the feed, a term that originated with antennas used for radar transmissions. In a radio telescope the feed is typically a waveguide horn and transfers the incoming signal to the sensitive radio receiver. Cryogenically cooled solid-state amplifiers with very low internal noise are used to obtain the best possible sensitivity.

Why should phase vs UV distance be a straight line? Why are there so many different file names associated with radio images: uvfits, imfits, etc, what are the differences between them?

Can anyone suggest a good textbook or websites explaining these subjects? Basically my main subject of interest is, once I have some image data (downloaded from nrao archives for example), what should I do with it in AIPS?

http://www-astro.physics.ox.ac.uk/~hrk/AIPS_TUTORIAL/HRK_AIPS_1.html#22.