ALMA Pipeline Heuristics

J. LightfootU.K.A.T.C., Blackford Hill, Edinburgh EH9 3HJ, U.K.F. Wyrowski, D. Muders, F. BooneMax-Planck-Institut f¨ur Radioastronomie, Auf dem Hugel¨ 69, D-53121Bonn, GermanyL. Davis, D. ShepherdNRAO, Array Operations Center, P.O. Box 0, 1003 Lopezville Rd.,Socorro, NM 87801-0387C. WilsonDepartment of Physics and Astronomy, McMaster University,Hamilton, Ontario, CanadaAbstract. The ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter Array) PipelineHeuristics system is being developed to automatically reduce data takenwith the standard observing modes. The goal is to make ALMA user-friendly to astronomers who are not experts in radio interferometry. ThePipeline Heuristics system must capture the expert knowledge requiredto provide data products that can be used without further processing.Observing modes to be processed by the system include single field in-terferometry, mosaics and single dish ‘on-the-fly’ maps, and combinationsof these modes. The data will be produced by the main ALMA array, theALMA Compact Array (ACA) and single dish antennas.The Pipeline Heuristics system is being developed as a set of Pythonscripts. For interferometry these use as data processing engines theCASA/AIPS++ libraries and their bindings as CORBA objects withinthe ALMA Common Software (ACS).Initial development has used VLA and Plateau de Bure data sets tobuild and test a heuristic script capable of reducing single field data. Inthis paper we describe the reduction datapath and the algorithms used ateach stage. Test results are presented. The path for future developmentis outlined.IntroductionThe Mission The goal of the Pipeline Heuristics team is to develop algorithmsthat will reduce ALMA data to give results of publishable quality automati-cally.315