2025-07-24 –, Main Room 4
Anime is a Julia-based framework for modelling atmospheric and instrumental effects in Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI). It enables instrument model creation, realistic synthetic data generation, and seamless conversion between popular radio data formats. Supporting both modular and pipeline workflows, Anime is designed to support radio data processing and analysis.
Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) enables some of the highest-resolution astronomical observations, playing a crucial role in imaging black holes, studying active galactic nuclei, and probing fundamental physics. However, VLBI observations are inherently affected by atmospheric distortions and instrumental systematics, which can significantly impact data quality and interpretation. Accurate modelling of these effects is crucial for effective calibration, imaging, and scientific analysis.
Anime is a Julia-based package designed to address these challenges by providing a high-performance, flexible framework for instrument modelling and synthetic data generation for VLBI arrays. The choice of Julia as the development language for Anime provides several key advantages, including high computational efficiency, ease of integration with existing tools, and powerful visualization capabilities. Julia's just-in-time (JIT) compilation enables Anime to execute complex operations with performance comparable to low-level languages like C, while maintaining the readability and flexibility of high-level scripting languages.
Anime models signal corruptions due to the Earth's atmosphere, receiver systematics, and telescope-specific characteristics, allowing researchers to generate realistic datasets for testing calibration algorithms, optimizing array designs, and improving image reconstruction techniques. Time-variability is modelled using Gaussian Processes (GPs) to generate complex-valued correlated variations over time and frequency domains using a probabilistic framework. HDF5.jl is used for exporting instrument models into HDF5 files, ensuring compatibility with other scientific computing environments. Routines for generating high-quality diagnostic plots to visualize instrument models and synthetic data with Makie.jl are provided, aiding in validation and debugging.
Additionally, Anime simplifies VLBI data handling by supporting seamless conversion between popular radio data formats such as Measurement Sets (MS) and UVFITS. Casacore.jl is used to generate and modify Measurement Sets. Further fine-tuned access patterns for MS and UVFITS files are provided by the fully-featured Python packages casatools and casatasks, accessed seamlessly in Julia via PythonCall.jl. This allows for efficient interoperability between data formats, making it easier for astronomers to process and analyze data.
By leveraging Julia’s ecosystem, Anime achieves both performance and usability, allowing for rapid prototyping, efficient computation, and seamless data interoperability.
I am a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, working on radio interferometry calibration and data processing, with a special focus on millimetre (mm) and sub-mm wave very long baseline interferometry observations of black holes with the Event Horizon Telescope.