Data preparation

Note

Factor currently works only on HBA LOFAR data. It supports interleaved and multi-night datasets as well as continuous observations.

Factor requires that the input data be prepared using version 3.0 or later of the pre-facet-calibration and initial-subtraction pipelines. These pipelines perform the calibration of the calibrator data, the removal of instrumental effects (e.g., station clock offsets), the setting of the overall amplitude scale, the calibration of the target data, and the subtraction of sources in the target field. The pipelines are available at https://github.com/lofar-astron/prefactor and must be run before Factor can be used to perform facet calibration.