Regrid Frequency/Velocity

Although not strictly a calibration operation, spectral regridding of a MS is available to aid in calibration operations (e.g. continuum subtraction) and preparation for imaging. For this purpose, the cvel task has been developed.

The inputs are:

The key parameters for the operation of cvel are the regridding mode, the output reference outframe, veltype, restfreq and the standard selection parameters (in particular spw and field).

The syntax for mode options (’channel’,’velocity’,’frequency’,’channel_b’) has been made compatible with the respective modes of clean. The combination of selected spw and mode will determine the output channels and spw(s):

The simplest use of cvel is to shift a single spectral window into an output frame. This is done with mode=’channel’. For example:

will transform all SPWs into the BARY reference frame. This implies a "software Doppler tracking", i.e. the SPW definitions are transformed into the BARY frame and in the different integrations of the dataset, the visibilties are regridded into the transformed SPW accounting for the time-dependencies. E.g. if the original SPWs were in reference frame TOPO and thus the movent of the Earth w.r.t. the source will have smeared out line emission, the new SPWs will be in reference frame BARY and the effects of the movement of the Earth will have been removed but the number of channels will remain the same and the frequency resolution will be maximal. 

Mode channel is intended to not change the frequency resolution beyond the reference frame transformation or at least only change the resolution in units of whole channels. For most scientific applications we recommend using the mode=’velocity’’ and mode=’frequency’ options, as it is easiest to determine what the resulting channel width will be in terms of velocity or frequency bandwidth. For example:

will transform a MS into the LSRK and BARYcenter frames respectively.

The sign of the width parameter determines whether the channels run along increasing or decreasing values of frequency or velocity (i.e. if the cube is reversed or not).

The intent of cvel regridding is to transform channel labels and the visibilities to a spectral reference frame which is appropriate for the science analysis, e.g. from TOPO to LSRK, e.g. to correct for Doppler shifts throughout the time of the observation. Naturally, this will change the shape of the spectral features to some extent. According to the Nyquist theorem you should oversample a spectrum with twice the numbers of channels to retain the shape. Based on some tests, however, we recommend to observe with at least 3-4 times the number of channels for each significant spectral feature (like 3-4 channels per linewidth). This will minimize regridding artifacts in cvel.

If cvel has already established the grid that is desired for the imaging, clean should be run with the default channel mode (width=1). This will avoid additional regridding in clean. Hanning smoothing is optionally offered in cvel, but tests have shown that already the regridding process itself, if it involved a transformation from TOPO to a non-terrestrial reference frame, implies some smoothing (due to channel interpolation) such that Hanning smoothing may not be necessary.

The interpolation method fftshift calculates the transformed visibilities by applying a FFT, then a phase ramp, and then an inverse FFT. Note that if you want to use this interpolation method, your frequency grid needs to be equidistant, i.e. it only works in mode velocity with veltype=radio, in mode frequency, and in mode channel (in the latter only if the input grid is itself equidistant in frequency). Note also that, as opposed to all other interpolation methods, this method will apply a constant (frequency-independent) shift in frequency which is not fully correct in the case of large fractional bandwidth of the given spectral window.

The task cvel can also be used to transform spectral windows into the rest frame of the ephemeris object by setting the parameter outframe to “SOURCE” as in the following example:

This will make cvel perform a transformation to the GEO reference frame followed by an additional Doppler correction for the radial velocity given by the ephemeris for the each field. (Typically, this should happen after calibration and after splitting out the spectral widows and the target of interest). The result is an MS with a single combined spectral window in reference frame REST. From this frame, further transformations to other reference frames are not possible.