Rapthor: LOFAR DDE Pipeline

Rapthor is a tool for producing low-noise, high-resolution images from HBA LOFAR data. It is also being developed for use on SKA-Low data.

Introduction

• Acknowledgements
• Capabilities of Rapthor
• Steps in a Rapthor reduction

Obtaining Rapthor

• Downloading and installing
  • Hardware requirements
  • Installation FAQ
• Changelog
  • Version 3.0 (unreleased)
  • Version 2.2 (2026/10/19)
  • Version 2.1 (2025/12/04)
  • Version 2.0 (2025/04/11)
  • Version 1.1 (2023/07/27)
  • Version 1.0 (2023/06/08)
• Upgrading from version 2
  • Changes to the parset
  • Changes to the strategy
  • Processing and output differences
  • Other changes
  • Following a run
• Issues and feature requests

Setting Up and Running Rapthor

• Data preparation
  • Input measurement sets
  • Sky model
• The Rapthor parset
  • [global]
  • [calibration]
  • [imaging]
  • [cluster]
• Setting the processing strategy
  • Defining a custom processing strategy
  • Setting the calibration strategy
• Running Rapthor
  • Starting a Rapthor run
  • Following a run
  • Running several tasks at once on a single machine
  • Using an existing Dask cluster
  • Using a (u)Docker/Singularity image
  • Troubleshooting a run
  • Resuming an interrupted run
  • Resetting an operation
• Output
• Tips for running Rapthor
• Getting Help

Rapthor Details

• General structure
• Operations
  • Calibrate
  • Predict
  • Image (+ mosaic)
• Architecture
  • System context
  • Containers
  • Components
  • Operations, flows and tasks
  • Deployment
  • For contributors
• ADR: Replace CWL/Toil With Python/Prefect/Dask
  • Status
  • Date
  • Decision
  • Context
  • Decision Drivers
  • Options Considered
  • Consequences
  • Architecture Rules
  • Validation
  • Operational Requirements
  • Implementation Notes
  • Documentation Impact
  • Follow-Up Decisions
• Mapping the migration from CWL to Prefect
  • The two execution models
  • What stayed the same
  • Where the code went
  • Size of the change
  • Options, dependencies and tooling
  • Architecture of the CWL version
  • Suggested reading order
• Python code
  • Python classes and modules
  • Python processing code