The BIMA Image Pipeline

The BIMA Image Pipeline is a new system under development that extends the capabilities of BIMA as a networked telescope. As an extension of the BIMA Data Archive, this system will automatically turn raw telescope data into images that are ready for analysis by BIMA astronomers. As data is transfered from the telescope to the Archive at NCSA, it will be sent on to the pipeline for processing with the help of the AIPS++software package and parallel machines at NCSA. This resulting processed data will be sent back to the archive where it is made available to astronomers for further analysis. As the pipeline matures, greater support for interaction with the pipeline by astronomers will be enabled. The final goal is to create a flexible portal environment for interacting with the telescope, either for steering real-time processing or initiating large archive research projects.

This work is being supported in part through our collaborations with the ALMA Development Consortium (ADC) and the AIPS++ consortium (both of which include our partner observatories, BIMA and NRAO). The BIP will server as a prototype system for interferometer telescopes such as ALMA and CARMA.

Documents

Early design work:

The Evolution of a Networked Telescope
a talk presented at the August 1998 Quarterly Meeting of the National Laboratory for Advanced Network Research (NLANR).

First Development Workshop for the Next Generation Networked Radio Interferometer
a workshop to develop a design for a grid-based Networked Telescope.

The Design of the Networked Telescope
a detailed document describing the goals and architecture for a general, grid-based archive and pipeline processing system for interferometer telescopes.
BIP Design and Development

The BIMA Image Pipeline and Implications for a Common Pipeline Architecture
an overview of the BIMA Image Pipeline design as presented to the "Imaging Pipelines in Radio Astronomy" workshop, January 18-20, 2000.
Tools
Data Retrieval Tool (DaRT)
a Java application for retrieving multiple documents from the Web simultaneously. BIMA astronomers use this tool to download multiple datasets from the archive all at once through its flexible user interface.

XML Support
BIMAarch:
- BIMAarch DTD, version 1.0
- Simple example:
  Note: not up to data with v1.0
  An XML encoding of all metadata associated with one track: full.xml (View in browser).
  The same metadata within four cross-referencing files:
  
  project.xml (View in browser)
  experiments.xml (View in browser)
  trials.xml (View in browser)
  datasets.xml (View in browser)
- XSL example:
  Note: not up to data with v1.0
  - The XML file: tstprj.xml (View in browser)
  - The XSL file: bimaarch.xsl
  - The HTML version resulting from conversion using James Clark's XT package: tstprj.html
Access Control:
- Access Control DTD, version 0.1