RadioAstronomySoftwareGroup / RadioAstronomySoftwareGroup/pyuvdata
"Counts" and "Watts / Hz" as valid visibility units
Nobody has claimed this yet.
- 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.
Contributor guide
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
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