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Next: Progress in the Past Cycle Up: Semi-annual report of the NRAO AIPS++ User Group Previous: Contents

Background

The past six months have seen significant improvements in aips++ in several key areas associated with VLA end-to-end processing. Detailed comparisons between data sets processed in a similar fashion in AIPS and aips++ now show good agreement in the flux scale, calibration solutions, and final noise levels in the images. Further, we are now beginning to process science data that is slated for publication, rather than just simple test data sets. However, there is still a lot to be done in order to reach the laudable goal of end-to-end VLA reduction within aips++ for any but the most expert and determined users. This goal was recently stated in the April 2001 NRAO newsletter (see below). The primary purposes of this document are to recount the progress made in the past development cycle (for 2001-05, release 1.5), to summarize the current state and focus of the NRAO testing, and to draw attention to those areas that we feel most urgently need work if the aips++ project is going to realize the goal of usability of the 2001-11 (release 1.6) for VLA continuum data reduction for general users.

From the April 2001 NRAO Newsletter (p. 4):

"On the synthesis side, many types of VLA observations can now be filled, edited, calibrated and imaged entirely within the package. Our work has concentrated on debugging the path for various types of data, adding extra facilities as necessary, and improving the documentation. We expect that at the time of the release 1.5 [May 2001], the package will be usable by experienced interferometrists for VLA reductions, but that novices would be advised to wait for the subsequent release in the fall of 2001."

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