This page aims to list some past and ongoing MeqTree success stories, and also provides a jumping-off point for individual project pages. If you're a project contributor, then please update this page as you see fit. If you're just casually browsing, then please forgive our contributors if they haven't filled in their section yet.
SKADS Simulations
MeqTrees has been and is being extensively used as a simulation tool as part of the SKADS simulations programme, interfacing directly with the SKADS simulated skies. A PDF showing an overview of these on-going efforts can be foundhere, as presented at the January SKADS meeting in Malta.
LOFAR CS1 Calibration
MeqTrees and CASA/AIPS++ were used to produce the initial high quality images from LOFAR data. The lessons learned in calibrating LOFAR CS1 data enabled us to test the full system and will also guide the development of calibration algorithms for the full LOFAR. There are too many presentations/talks/articles about these results so just search the web. There is also a tutorial on this.
WSRT Calibration: Dealing With Off-axis Effects
This project was aimed at demonstrating the advantages of ME-based calibration, by using MeqTrees to calibrate a WSRT observation to a level better than NEWSTAR. The project successfully showed that subtle off-axis effects, which NEWSTAR (or peeling) is unable to deal with, can be taken care of by solving for differential gains.
A summary of the results was presented at the "Imaging and Calibration Algorithms for EVLA, e-MERLIN and ALMA" workshop (Oxford, Dec 2008), at the first LOFAR Data Processing School (Dwingeloo, Feb 2008), and at an ASTRON Astrolunch (Dec 2008). Here's a PDF of the presentation.
Detailed logs of the project may be found here: OlegSmirnov/CalibrationEfforts.
Focal Plane Array Simulations
Tony Willis has been using MeqTrees for studies of focal plane array beamforming techinques. Here is his presentation given at the recent CALIM 09 workshop in Socorro NM in April 09. These figures, taken from slides 16 and 17 of the presentation, show the difference in off-boresight phased array beams as a function of beamformer weighting procedures.
Generic EJones Project
The 2x2 EJones matrix models the shape of the primary beam of a radio-astronomical station, i.e. a dish, with or without a focal-plane array, or a phased array. Virtually none of the existing radiotelescopes uses an accurate model, thus severely limiting the wide-field dynamic range that they can achieve. The new telescopes will be much more sensitive, and much more ambitious in terms of dynamic range, over wide fields, a broad frequency range and in full polarization. A good EJones model, separately for each individual station in the array, will be indispensable for them.
MeqTrees is ideally suited for the development of EJones models for a wide range of station types, and for finding the most effective way to use them for calibration (and simulation). For more information, see GenericEjonesProject.