Reproduction package for the paper "Transient study using LoTSS – framework development and preliminary results"

This is a basic reproduction package for the paper "Transient study using LoTSS – framework development and preliminary results" by de Ruiter et al. (2024). The folders analysis, P164+55, simulations, source_finder and transient_rates have been compressed.

Raw Data

The visibilities that are used to create the subtraction images for the LoFAR Two-metre Sky Survey (LoTSS) can be found in the following Surf repository.

Software

A script to perform the sky model subtraction exists within the pipeline for the LoTSS processing. The imaging software WSClean can be downloaded here  and a manual to get started can be found here. The command that was used to create the subtraction images is (as described in Table 1 of the paper):

wsclean -name subtract_images_8sec_P164+55_pad/P164+55 -weight briggs -0.25 -padding 2.0 -no-reorder -niter 0 -size 2200 2200 -scale 6asec -pol I -intervalsout 3600 -no-dirty P164+55_object.dysco.sub.shift.avg.weights.ms.archive0

The scripts for source finding and filtering of the transient candidates are given in source_finder/ and analysis/. A detailed description of how to use this is given in subtraction images transient pipeline.pdf. Also the required for python packages are described in detail here.

Figures and Tables

simulations/

The jupyter notebook visualise_simulated_transients.ipynb can be used to visualize the 8 second and 1 hour simulated transient sources.

transient_rates/

The jupyter notebook transient_rates.ipynb can be used to recreate the limits on the transient surface density (Figure 13).

Intermediate data products 

This subtraction images for a single pointing are available in this reproduction package in P164+55/ The subtraction images for all the pointings have a total size of 2.8 TB, therefore, we only include the P164+55 pointing. The subtraction images for the 1hr snapshots, 2 minute snapshots and most of the 8 second snapshots (up to 50 GB) have been included. The subtraction images for other pointings can be requested by sending an email to [e-mail]

 The subtraction images with simulated transients are included in simulations/