The recent upgrade to MWAX necessitates verification that the system is capable of observing high time resolution phenomena, such as pulsars. To this end, we put in a successful proposal for an MWA observing campaign to being in the end of 2021 and into the beginning of 2022. The requested observations fall into two categories:

  1. commissioning observations, and
  2. the remaining SMART observations.

This page details the progress made in taking the observations and performing the tests to complete the commissioning phase. Progress with the SMART survey is detailed elsewhere.

Commissioning Observations

Goals & Target Pulsars

The stated goals of the commissioning observations are:

  1. To develop and test the tied-array beamformer for the new VCS data format
  2. Verification of frequency labelling
  3. Data recording and timing stability
  4. Polarimetric verification and leakage assessment
  5. Full coherent beam sensitivity and timing accuracy
  6. The voltage dump and trigger mode (in response to external triggers)
  7. Correlation and imaging of data recorded in the new VCS format

A partial list of requested observations to satisfy the above goals are:

Goal

Number of obs

Duration (mins)

Pulsars (e.g.)

#1

2

5-10

B1749-28, B0031-07

#2

2

20

J2241-5236

#3

2

60

J0437-4715, J2145-0750

#4

4

10

B0628-28, B0737-40, B0740-28, B1749-28

#5

3

20

J0036-1033 (and B0031-07, J0034-0534)

Observations

The following link performs a query on the MWA observation database, showing the details of the observations made so far:

https://ws.mwatelescope.org/metadata/find/?search=search&html=1&pagesize=100&projectid=G0057&mintime_utc=2021-12-13T01%3A00&maxtime_utc=2021-12-29T01%3A00

The following table is a summary of the same observations, and which of the goals (see the table above) that they are intended to satisfy:

ObsidDuration (sec)FilesPulsar(s) / Calibrator(s)RA/DecPC RA/DecAz/ElGoalProcessingDownload folder
132369032029624In-beam calibration (for 1323690616)11.8 / -5.88.5 / -7.4341.6 / 68.01, 5/astro/mwavcs/asvo/253001
132369061612003600 VCSB0031-07
J0036-1033
J0034-0534		8.0 / -5.28.5 / -7.4326.3 / 64.71, 5/astro/mwavcs/asvo/253008
132370861629624In-beam calibration (for 1323709032)95.1 / -26.797.7 / -28.60.0 / 90.01, 4/astro/mwavcs/asvo/253000
132370891212024PicA (for 1323709032)75.9 / -46.480.0 / -45.8213.7 / 64.71, 4/astro/mwavcs/asvo/252998
13237090326001800 VCSB0628-2897.5 / -26.797.7 / -28.60.0 / 90.01, 4
132377672012024PKS2356-61 (for 1323776840)4.3 / -62.7359.8 / -60.9191.3 / 52.81, 2/astro/mwavcs/asvo/252999
132377684012003600 VCSJ2241-5236346.9 / -51.9340.4 / -52.6216.9 / 53.61, 2

Processing details


1323690320

VCSBeam: v3.3.28_10164b1

Create hyperdrive batch script:

#!/bin/bash -l
#SBATCH --job-name=hyp-$1
#SBATCH --output=hyperdrive.out
#SBATCH --nodes=1
#SBATCH --ntasks-per-node=40
#SBATCH --time=01:00:00
#SBATCH --clusters=garrawarla
#SBATCH --partition=gpuq
#SBATCH --account=mwavcs
#SBATCH --export=NONE
#SBATCH --gres=tmp:50g
#SBATCH --gres=gpu:1

# Load the Hyperdrive module
module use /pawsey/mwa/software/python3/modulefiles
module load hyperdrive

set -eux
which hyperdrive

# The location of the correlated visibility FITS files:
DATADIR=/astro/mwavcs/asvo/253001

# The path to the associated metafits file
METAFITS=${DATADIR}/1323690320.metafits

# The base source list (you shouldn't need to change this)
SRCLIST=/pawsey/mwa/software/python3/srclists/master/srclist_pumav3_EoR0aegean_fixedEoR1pietro+ForA_phase1+2.txt

# If it hasn't been done already, run Hyperdrive in "srclist-by-beam" to get just the subset of sources in the beam
if [[ ! -r srclist_1000.yaml ]]; then
   hyperdrive srclist-by-beam \
       -n 1000 \
       -m ${METAFITS} \
       /pawsey/mwa/software/python3/srclists/master/srclist_pumav3_EoR0aegean_fixedEoR1pietro+ForA_phase1+2.txt \
       srclist_1000.yaml
fi

# Run Hyperdrive to generate a calibration solution
hyperdrive di-calibrate \
    -s srclist_1000.yaml \
    -d ${DATADIR}/*.fits \
    ${METAFITS}

Run the Hyperdrive script (on Garrawarla):

cd /astro/mwavcs/vcs/1323690320/hyperdrive
sbatch hyperdrive.sbatch

Plot the calibration solutions:

1323690616

1323708616

1323708912

1323709032

1323776720

1323776840