CASA, the Common Astronomy Software Applications for Radio Astronomy

TL;DR

CASA is a comprehensive software suite for processing radio astronomy data, supporting calibration and imaging for major telescopes like ALMA and VLA, developed by an international consortium.

Contribution

This paper provides an overview of CASA's structure and procedures, highlighting its role in radio data calibration and imaging for various telescopes.

Findings

Supports data from multiple radio telescopes

Enables calibration and imaging pipelines

Developed collaboratively by international institutions

Abstract

CASA, the Common Astronomy Software Applications, is the primary data processing software for the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), and is frequently used also for other radio telescopes. The CASA software can handle data from single-dish, aperture-synthesis, and Very Long Baseline Interferometery (VLBI) telescopes. One of its core functionalities is to support the calibration and imaging pipelines for ALMA, VLA, VLA Sky Survey (VLASS), and the Nobeyama 45m telescope. This paper presents a high-level overview of the basic structure of the CASA software, as well as procedures for calibrating and imaging astronomical radio data in CASA. CASA is being developed by an international consortium of scientists and software engineers based at the National Radio Astronomical Observatory (NRAO), the European Southern Observatory (ESO), the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ), and the Joint Institute for VLBI European Research Infrastructure Consortium (JIV-ERIC), under the guidance of NRAO.