Interoperating GILDAS and MIRIAD

, R. LucasIRAM Grenoble, FranceP. J. TeubenAstronomy Department, U. MarylandM. C. H. WrightRadio Astronomy Laboratory, U.C. BerkeleyAbstract. WedescribeherethefirststepwetooktointeroperateGILDASand MIRIAD, two current state–of–the–art data reduction packages of mil-limeter radioastronomy.1. Introduction to GILDAS and MIRIAD packagesGILDAS and MIRIAD (Sault et al. 1994) are two state-of-the-art data reductionpackages for the current generation of millimeter instruments. GILDAS is dailyused at IRAM instruments (i.e. the Plateau de Bure Interferometer and the30 m) as well as several other single dish telescopes (e.g. CSO, HHT, Effels-berg) while MIRIAD is daily used at BIMA, ATCA, OVRO and WSRT. Moreover,as revealed by publicly available evaluations for compliance with the ALMA off-line data processing requirements (Gueth et al. 2003 and Wright et al. 2003),almost 2/3 of the core functionalities needed by the next generation of mminterferometers are adequately covered by GILDAS and MIRIAD. Going further,Fig. 1 shows that, between them, GILDAS and MIRIAD cover more that 75% ofthe ALMA requirements for off-line. Indeed, although the core functionalitiesneeded to reduce millimeter interferometry data are well covered in both pack-ages, the strength of both packages are complementary. GILDAS has good dataanalysis and visualization tools, while MIRIAD has a complete set of calibrationand imaging algorithms including polarization (for more details, see Pety et al.2003a). It is thus interesting to study the possibility of interoperating bothpackages in a user-friendly way (Pety et al. 2003b).