Stardev Matched Filter Update

On July 1st, 2021 the two-component SCUBA-2 beam profile parameters were updated in accordance with the results published by Mairs et al 2021. This caused a change in the Matched Filter post-processing.

When using a Stardev installation post-July 1st, 2021, executing the matched-filter method is expected to increase the measured peak fluxes of bright point sources by ~15% relative to older versions of Starlink. A similar factor may apply to faint point sources in otherwise “blank fields” but this requires further testing.

See this software blog post for more details!

 

 

Stardev Matched Filter Change

On July 1st, 2021 the two-component SCUBA-2 beam profile parameters were updated in accordance with the results published by Mairs et al 2021. This caused a change in the Matched Filter post-processing.

When using a Stardev installation post-July 1st, 2021, executing the matched-filter method is expected to increase the measured peak fluxes of bright point sources by ~15% relative to older versions of Starlink. A similar factor may apply to faint point sources in otherwise “blank fields” but this requires further testing.

The plots, below, show comparisons between the 2018A Starlink and most recent Stardev matched filter implementation on Uranus calibrator observations taken between 2016-11-01 and 2021-04-13. Note that the Stardev version consistently returns peak flux values that are ~15-20% higher than before due to updated empirical beam measurements presented in Mairs et al 2021.

The beam patterns for matched filtering purposes are described as a combination of two Gaussian functions:

G_total = α*G_mb + β*G_sec,

where each Gaussian profile, G, is of the form exp[−4*ln(2)*(r/θ)^2], where “r” is the radial distance from the centre and θ is the FWHM of the profile, both measured in units of arcseconds. The first component, G_mb represents the “main beam” response. The second component, G_sec, is an approximation of the “secondary beam” or “error beam”, which describes the flux in the shoulders of the profile. α and β are coefficients describing the relative contribution of each component (the amplitudes). The broad error beam includes factors such as sidelobes due to diffraction, static dish deformations, and dish deformations induced by thermal gradients.

450 microns:

850 microns:

The original SCUBA-2 Beam Parameters were presented by Dempsey et al. 2013:

450 microns:

α = 0.94
β = 0.06
θ_mb = 7.9
θ_sec = 25.0

850 microns:

α = 0.98
β = 0.02
θ_mb = 13.0
θ_sec = 48.0

The updated SCUBA-2 Beam Parameters are presented by Mairs et al 2021:

450 microns:

α = 0.89
β = 0.11
θ_mb = 6.2
θ_sec = 18.8

850 microns:

α = 0.98
β = 0.02
θ_mb = 11.0
θ_sec = 49.1

These values represent the median results after fitting the two-component model to all Uranus calibrator observations since May, 2011 above a significant transmission threshold (see Mairs et al 2021).

The total area of each beam profile, A, can be calculated by:

A = {π/[4*ln(2)]}*[α*(θ_mb)^2+β*(θ_sec)^2].

Comparing the Dempsey et al 2013 beam areas to the Mairs et al 2021 beam areas reveals a ~20% difference at both wavelengths (in practice, there is a spread around this typical 20% value, see plots, above).

Note that previously, it has been common practice in cosmology publications employing “Blank Field” data reduction recipes (e.g. REDUCE_SCAN_FAINT_POINT_SOURCES, REDUCE_SCAN_FAINT_POINT_SOURCES_JACKKNIFE) to apply a correction factor of ~10% in order to compensate for flux lost due to filtering. This 10% factor was derived by inserting a bright Gaussian point source into the raw power versus time stream of individual observations and measuring the response of the model to the filtering during the data reduction process (e.g. Geach et al. 2013, Smail et al. 2014). We recommend repeating this experiment with the new Starlink 2021A matched-filter implementation for your specific data in order to determine whether the correction factor is still necessary.

A Decade of SCUBA-2

We are pleased to announce the publication of a new, comprehensive guideline to calibrating SCUBA2 data obtained from 2011 to the present day:

The Astronomical Journal

arXiv

This work updates the opacity relations used to correct for atmospheric attenuation, summarizes significant changes in flux conversion factor (FCF) values by date and time, details the beam properties at both 450 and 850 microns, presents historical records of standard calibrator fluxes, and includes a case study for Quasar 3C84.

Figure 1: Flux Conversion Factors (FCFs) as a function of time at 450 microns (left) and 850 microns (right). For more information, see Mairs et al. 2021.

Up-to-date SCUBA-2 calibration information can always be found here:

https://www.eaobservatory.org/jcmt/instrumentation/continuum/scuba-2/calibration

A Decade of SCUBA2: A Comprehensive Guide to Calibrating 450 m and 850 m Continuum Data at the JCMT

Abstract

The Submillimetre Common User Bolometer Array 2 (SCUBA2) is the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope’s continuum imager, operating simultaneously at 450 and 850 microns. SCUBA2 was commissioned in 2009-2011, and since that time, regular observations of point-like standard sources have been performed whenever the instrument is in use. Expanding the calibrator observation sample by an order of magnitude compared to previous work, in this paper we derive updated opacity relations at each wavelength for a new atmospheric extinction correction, analyze the Flux Conversion Factors used to convert instrumental units to physical flux units as a function of date and observation time, present information on the beam profiles for each wavelength, and update secondary calibrator source fluxes. Between 07:00 and 17:00 UTC, the portion of the night that is most stable to temperature gradients that cause dish deformation, the total flux uncertainty and the peak flux uncertainty measured at 450 microns are found to be 14% and 17%, respectively. Measured at 850 microns, the total flux and peak flux uncertainties are 6% and 7%, respectively. The analysis presented in this work is applicable to all SCUBA2 projects observed since 2011.

Mahalo,

Steve, on behalf of the JCMT

New FITS Header indicating makemap convergence

David Berry recently added a new feature to SMURF’s makemap. There is now a FITS header in the output maps which will let you know if makemap successfully converged.

The new header is NCONTNCV – the Number of CONTiguous chunks that did Not ConVerge. This should be zero if everything went well. If you are reducing data yourself, you can also check the makemap output or the ORAC-DR log for more information.

You will have access to this feature if you are using an rsynced Starlink build from after the 19th of June 2019. Observations in the archive reduced from 19th June 2019 onwards should also have this FITS header present.

You can check the fitsheaders in the output file with the KAPPA commands fitslist or fitsval, or if you are downloading a reduced file from the archive in .FITS format you can use any of your favourite FITS header viewers.

Fix for skyloop convergence problem

A bug in the smurf:skyloop command has recently been found and fixed. This bug could cause negative or zero values to be included in the extinction  (“EXT”) model. This in turn could cause effectively random behaviour in the other models, resulting in very poor convergence and some spurious values being introduced into the final map (if convergence does eventually happen). This bug is triggered by one or more observations having some time slices for which no extinction values are available (indicated by the presence of the string ” EXT:” in the skyloop log file). If such holes in the extinction data extend over only a few time slices, skyloop interpolates across them using the extinction values on either side of the hole. However,  there was an error in this interpolation that led to the holes being filled with negative or zero values. This bug has now been fixed (as of 22nd May 2019).  This fix affects both direct use of skyloop and indirect use via the pol2map command.

David

A new dimmconfig that uses PCA

The $STARLINK_DIR/share/smurf directory includes several “dimmconfig” files that package up commonly used groups of configuration parameter values for use by the makemap command.  A new file called dimmconfig_pca.lis has recently been added, which can be combined with  other dimmconfig files to tell makemap to include a PCA model in its iterative algorithm (the PCA model removes noise signals that are correlated between multiple bolometer time-streams). For instance, to use a PCA model when creating a map of a bright extended source, you could run makemap as follows:

% more conf
^$STARLINK_DIR/share/smurf/dimmconfig_bright_extended.lis
^$STARLINK_DIR/share/smurf/dimmconfig_pca.lis
% makemap config=^conf

To process compact sources, change “bright_extended” above to “bright_compact“.

Using a PCA model can help to reduce the spurious extended structures that often appear in SCUBA-2 maps (although this benefit is bought at the cost of a much extended run time). For instance, below are four 850 um maps of DR 21 – the top row shows the maps made with the basic “bright extended” dimmconfig, and the bottom shows eh results of adding in the new PCA dimmconfig:

Below are the mosaics of the four observations, with the difference map shown in between:

As another example, the following panes show similar maps for three observations of the Serpens South field:

Faster PCA

By default, the SMURF makemap command identifies and removes a single correlated background signal – called the common-mode – from all bolometer time-streams. However, in some cases there is clear evidence that there is more than one correlated background signal present in the bolometer time streams. This is particularly evident in POL2 data, where the varying instrumental polarisation causes different parts of the focal plane to see different levels of sky polarisation. For POL2, better maps are created if multiple correlated background signals are identified and removed . This is achieved within makemap using a process called Principal Component Analysis (PCA). The down side to using PCA is that it is very very slow – it is just about practical in the case of POL2 data because of the very low scan speed and consequent very low sample rate. 

A change introduced into SMURF on 1st April  2019 should speed up PCA by a factor of 2 or 3, making POL2 reductions quicker and maybe making PCA background removal practical for non-POL2 data. Maps created using the new PCA system will not be identical to maps made with the old system, but the differences should be well within the noise levels (the pixel variances remain largely unaffected).

To use PCA within a normal run of makemap it is recommended to add the following to your config file:

modelorder = (com,gai,pca,ext,flt,ast,noi) 
pca.pcathresh = -50

It is usually a good idea to mask out the source when calculating the PCA model on the first few iterations, since this seems to aid convergence. The same sort of mask should be used with PCA as is used with AST, but it should only be applied for a few iterations. So for instance for a point source you could add:

pca.zero_circle = 0.01667
pca.zero_niter = 2

This masks the PCA model on the first two iterations using a circle of radius 60 arc-seconds (0.01667 degrees).

Using PCA usually causes makemap to converge more slowly, but often produces maps with lower levels of artificial structures. If pca.pcathresh is negative, the absolute value indicates the number of correlated signals to remove as the background in each bolometer. Smaller numbers result in a lower level of noise reduction in the final map, but faster convergence. Larger numbers result in a higher level of noise reduction in the final map, but slower convergence. The default value is 50, which usually seems to be a reasonable compromise.

The left map below was made with a default common-mode background (no PCA)  and the centre map was made with PCA background removal as shown above. Each observation took about 6 minutes to create without PCA and about 25 minutes with the new faster PCA. The right map shows the difference between the other two maps. All three use the same scaling.