CASA

Introduction

From http://casa.nrao.edu CASA, the Common Astronomy Software Applications package, is being developed with the primary goal of supporting the data post-processing needs of the next generation of radio astronomical telescopes such as ALMA and EVLA. The package can process both interferometric and single dish data, and is developed by an international consortium of scientists based at the National Radio Astronomical Observatory (NRAO), the European Southern Observatory (ESO), the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ), the CSIRO Australia Telescope National Facility (CSIRO/ATNF), and the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON) under the guidance of NRAO.

Documentation

https://casa.nrao.edu/casadocs

https://casaguides.nrao.edu/index.php/Main_Page

Initialisation

Casa 5 with no piplines

For Linux C Shell variants (csh, tcsh), for example:

setenv PATH /usr/local/casa-release-5.8.0-109.el7/bin:${PATH}
casa

For bash shell variants:

export PATH=/usr/local/casa-release-5.8.0-109.el7/bin:${PATH}
casa

Casa 5 with ALMA pipeline

For Linux C Shell variants (csh, tcsh), for example:

setenv PATH /usr/local/casa-pipeline-release-5.6.1-8.el6/bin:${PATH}
casa

For bash shell variants:

export PATH=/usr/local/casa-pipeline-release-5.6.1-8.el6/bin:${PATH}
casa

Casa 5 with VLA pipline

For Linux C Shell variants (csh, tcsh), for example:

setenv PATH /usr/local/casa-pipeline-release-5.6.2-3.el6/bin:${PATH}
casa

For bash shell variants:

export PATH=/usr/local/casa-pipeline-release-5.6.2-3.el6/bin:${PATH}
casa

Casa 6 with no piplines

For Linux C Shell variants (csh, tcsh), for example:

setenv PATH /usr/local/casa-6.5.0-15-py3.6/bin:${PATH}
casa

For bash shell variants:

export PATH=/usr/local/casa-6.5.0-15-py3.6/bin:${PATH}
casa

Previous versions

export PATH=/usr/local/casa-6.4.4-31-py3.8/bin:${PATH} setenv PATH /usr/local/casa-6.4.4-31-py3.8/bin:${PATH} setenv PATH /usr/local/casa-6.3.0-48/bin:${PATH} export PATH=/usr/local/casa-6.3.0-48/bin:${PATH}

Casa 6 with ALMA pipeline

For Linux C Shell variants (csh, tcsh), for example:

setenv PATH /usr/local/casa-6.2.1-7-pipeline-2021.2.0.128/bin:${PATH}
casa

For bash shell variants:

export PATH=/usr/local/casa-6.2.1-7-pipeline-2021.2.0.128/bin:${PATH}
casa

Casa 6 with VLA pipeline

For Linux C Shell variants (csh, tcsh), for example:

setenv PATH /usr/local/casa-6.2.1-7-pipeline-2021.2.0.128/bin:${PATH}
casa

For bash shell variants:

export PATH=/usr/local/casa-6.2.1-7-pipeline-2021.2.0.128/bin:${PATH}
casa
Note that the same release contains both the VLA and the ALMA pipeline.

Python module install of CASA 6

From https://casa.nrao.edu/casadocs/latest/usingcasa/obtaining-and-installing

Pip wheels for casatools and casatasks are available as Python 3
modules from the public PyPI server casa-pip.nrao.edu. This allows
simple installation and import in to standard Python 3.6
environments. The casatools wheel is necessarily a binary wheel so
there may be some compatibility issues for some time as we work toward
making wheels available for important Python
configurations. Initially, we are targeting Python 3.6 as provided by
RedHat for our wheel production, with RH6 and RH7 as official
supported platforms. We have had some success on other Linux-based
platforms as well, but we do not recommend the use of Conda until
compatibility with Conda is better understood.

The following prerequisites must be present on the host machine before
installing CASA:

Python 3.6
libgfortran3 (yum or apt-get install)

Installation instructions are as follows (from a Linux terminal
window):

$ python3.6 -m venv casa6

$ source casa6/bin/activate

(casa6) $ pip install --index-url https://casa-pip.nrao.edu/repository/pypi-casa-release/simple casatools

(casa6) $ pip install --index-url https://casa-pip.nrao.edu/repository/pypi-casa-release/simple casatasks


Test with the following:

 which python
~/casa6/bin/python


(casa6) $ python

Python 3.6.9 (default, Nov 7 2019, 10:44:02)
[GCC 8.3.0] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import casatools
>>> help(casatools)
>>> import casatasks
>>> help(casatasks)

Version

Version 5.6.1-8 (ALMA pipeline) was installed on Wednesday, 02 October 2019
Version 5.6.2-3 (VLA pipeline) was installed on Thursday, 15 October 2020
Version 5.8.0-109 (no pipeline) was installed on Friday, 18 June 2021
Version 6.1.1-15 (ALMA pipeline) was installed on Wednesday, 17 March 2021
Version 6.1.2 (VLA pipeline) was installed on Thursday, 21 January 2021
Version 6.2.0 (no pipline) was installed on Friday, 18 June 2021

Testing

Run
casa

Usage

Run
casa

Author, References and Acknowledgements

Please cite the following reference when using CASA for publications:

McMullin, J. P., Waters, B., Schiebel, D., Young, W., & Golap, K. 2007, Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems XVI (ASP Conf. Ser. 376), ed. R. A. Shaw, F. Hill, & D. J. Bell (San Francisco, CA: ASP), 127

See https://casa.nrao.edu/reference.shtml

Related Software

CARTA Image and cube visualisation package.

There are older versions of CASA available, to list them, do
ls -d /usr/local/casa*
There is also AIPS.
Rhys Morris
Last modified: Wednesday, 01 June 2022