RadioAstronomySoftwareGroup / RadioAstronomySoftwareGroup/pyuvdata

"Counts" and "Watts / Hz" as valid visibility units

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enhancement UVData
Dominant language
Python
Stars
102
Forks
35
Avg merge
1d 20h
Merged PRs (30d)
14

Description

It is sometimes useful to work with more "hardware centered" units with visibility data, especially if we are trying to characterize an interferometer with non astronomical sources (ie with drones and other test transmitters) or even with noise / calibrator sources that might not pass through an antenna element at all. During these sorts of experiments, flux units (Jy) are not suitable since they require us to fold in potentially unknown or non-existent antenna information. There are situations where we are confident in the power we are measuring but are not confident in how that translates to a flux (because we don't know the antenna well or we don't even have an antenna). In such situations, I think it's useful to note these units in more specific terms then "uncalibrated"

To support this use mode, I think it would be helpful to allow for purely power density focused "mWatts / Hz" units (which do not depend on any of the antenna properties and simply refer to the recorded power), "mVolts^2 / Hz", "(ADC Counts)^2 / Hz". These are the two "non-antenna referenced" units I can think of as being useful but if there are others, then I think we should try to support them.

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Research direction

The issue does not name files or tests. Start by tracing how pyuvdata represents and validates visibility units, then determine how the proposed mWatts/Hz, mVolts^2/Hz, and ADC Counts^2/Hz units fit that model. Done means the supported non-antenna-referenced units are clearly defined and accepted without requiring flux calibration.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
python
Domain
data
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

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