MeerKAT UHF primary beam correction

[a-benati]

Hello CARACal team,

I am working on a MeerKAT UHF observation, and I need to apply the primary beam correction. How can I do it? Is there a CARACal option or is there a script that does it?

Thanks in advance,
Alessandro

[KshitijT]

@a-benati currently there is no provision for a separate UHF beam in CARACal as far as I know (at least in the continuum worker), you might want to check out the https://github.com/ska-sa/katbeam package.

[a-benati]

@KshitijT thank you very much, I'll have a look at that package.

[paoloserra]

@a-benati Have you tried Caracal's mosaic worker? I normally run it on a set of images to make a mosaic, but it should also be possible to run it on a single image to PB-correct it.

The mosaic worker supports a Gaussian or a Mauch+20 PB shape, and you can specify the observing frequency. See https://caracal.readthedocs.io/en/latest/manual/workers/mosaic/index.html . Not sure whether that's OK for UHF and sufficient for your purpose.

[a-benati]

@paoloserra I'll check it out too, thank you very much.

[Fil8]

@paoloserra great idea. Should we test it and add it as a new feature in the line-worker/self-cal worker?