ALGORITHM OF REVISED-OTFTOOL

Abstract

We revised the OTFTOOL which was developed in Five College Radio Astronomy Observatory (FCRAO) for the On-The-Fly (OTF) observation. Besides the improvement of data resampling function of conventional OTFTOOL, we added a new SELF referencing mode and data pre-reduction function. Since OTF observation data have a large redundancy, we can choose and use only good quality samples excluding bad samples. Sorting out the bad samples is based on the floating level, rms level, antenna trajectory, elevation, , and number of samples. And, spikes are also removed. Referencing method can be chosen between CLASSICAL mode in which the references are taken from the OFFs observation and ELLIPSOIDAL mode in which the references are taken from the inner source free region (this is named as SELF reference). Baseline is subtracted with the source free channel windows and the baseline order chosen by the user. Passing through these procedures, the raw OTF data will be an FITS datacube. The revised-OTFTOOL maximizes the advantages of OTF observation by sorting out the bad samples in the earliest stage. And the new self-referencing method, the ELLIPSOIDAL mode, is very powerful to reduce the data. Moreover since it is possible to see the datacube at once without moving them into other data reduction programs, it is very useful and convenient to check whether the data resampling works well or not. We expect that the revised-OTFTOOL can be applied to the facilities of the OTF observation like SRAO, NRAO, and FCRAO.