MeerSOLAR

An automated calibration and imaging pipeline designed for solar radio observations using MeerKAT radio telescope. It performs end-to-end calibration, flagging, and imaging with a focus on dynamic solar data, supporting both spectral and temporal flexibility in imaging products.

Background

Solar radio data presents unique challenges due to the high variability and brightness of the Sun, as well as the need for high time-frequency resolution. The MeerSOLAR pipeline addresses these challenges by:

• Automating the calibration of interferometric data, including flux, phase, and polarization calibrations
• Supporting time-sliced and frequency-sliced imaging workflows
• Leveraging Dask for scalable parallel processing
• Providing hooks for integration with contextual data from other wavelegths for enhanced solar analysis

Documentation

MeerSOLAR documentation is available at: meersolar.readthedocs.io

Quickstart

MeerSOLAR is distributed on PyPI. To use it:

1. Create conda environment with python 3.10

   conda create -n meersolar_env python=3.10
   conda activate meersolar_env
   

2. Install MeerSOLAR in conda environment

   pip install meersolar
   

3. Initiate necessary metadata

   init-meersolar-setup --init
   

4. Run MeerSOLAR pipeline

   run-meer-meersolar <path of measurement set> --workdir <path of work directory> --outdir <path of output products directory>
   

That's all. You started MeerSOLAR pipeline for analysing your MeerKAT solar observation 🎉.

5. To see all running MeerSOLAR jobs

   show-meersolar-status --show
   

6. To see prefect dashboard

   run-meer-meerlogger
   

7. To see local log of any job using the

   run-meer-meerlogger --jobid <jobid>
   

8. Output products will be saved in : <path of output products directory>

Sample dataset

User can download and test entire MeerSOLAR pipeline using the sample dataset available in Zenodo: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16068485. Do not use this sample dataset for any publication without permission from the developer.

Acknowledgements

MeerSOLAR is developed by Devojyoti Kansabanik (CPAESS-UCAR, Boulder, USA) and Deepan Patra (NCRA-TIFR, Pune, India). If you use MeerSOLAR for analysing your MeerKAT solar observations, include the following statement in your paper

This MeerKAT solar observations are analysed using MeerSOLAR pipeline.

1. MeerSOLAR software in zenodo: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16040507

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.