CASA software help

[David Kunsman]

Hello, I am just wondering if anybody here as experience with using the CASA radio astronomy software package.  I have it installed(I think) and it has been giving me a lot of error messages when I try to follow the tutorials.

[Anthony]

Hi David,

Just a quick note—unless you’re working with raw visibility data from a large professional interferometer (like public VLA datasets), the CASA software package might be a bit overkill for most amateur setups. It’s primarily designed for arrays such as the VLA or ALMA and doesn’t natively support SDR-based interferometers to my knowledge. The data formats can also be somewhat incompatible without significant conversion work.

I explored CASA a few years ago for use with my own two-element amateur radio interferometer but found it wasn’t well suited for the types of systems we typically use in the amateur radio astronomy community.

Best regards,
Anthony

casa.nrao.edu/?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Common Astronomy Software Applications — CASAdocs documentation

On Wed, Jun 11, 2025 at 5:15 PM David Kunsman <dmku...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello, I am just wondering if anybody here as experience with using the CASA radio astronomy software package.  I have it installed(I think) and it has been giving me a lot of error messages when I try to follow the tutorials.

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[David Kunsman]

Hello, thanks for the response.  I do in fact plan on using the professional datasets

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[Anthony]

Hey David,

You’ve probably already seen these instructions, but here’s the installation procedure I noted a few years back. I’ve also attached a simple download guide I created and attempted to use. 

In the end, I stuck with my existing software because CASA’s complexity and workflow didn’t align with my needs.

https://casa.nrao.edu/installlinux.shtml

https://casa.nrao.edu/installMacOS_new.shtml

https://casadocs.readthedocs.io/en/v6.4.0/

https://astro.uni-bonn.de/ARC/events/RI2020/material/installingCASA2020.pdf

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[Dr. Rich Russel]

This is my work with CASA

I started with the tutorials and was able to transition to the professional data.

Rich

Dr Richard Russel - Processing Observations from VLA, ALMA, ATCA, and EVLBI Radio Telescope Archives

Dr Richard Russel - Processing Observations from VLA, ALMA, ATCA, and EV...

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[Stephen Arbogast]

A short  while ago I  installed CASA on Ubuntu 24.04.2  against  the odds, Red Hat Linux  is recommended.  I  did not  get  very far  either.   I will  never  have a VLA, ALMA  to play with but  I'm very interested  in learning how  to process  the  data from  VLA  ALMA ....  

Good  Luck

[David Kunsman]

That is what I have Casa installed on is Ubuntu.  I noticed that for some reason in .casa I dont have the config file for some reason

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[Stephen Arbogast]

I made it through  the  recommended  tests successfully    but after that  nothing  but  errors.  I guessed  the usual  library dependencies  nightmare.   I haven't made it  back  to that project... yet.

[David Kunsman]

when I first load CASA using the terminal I am met with this message:

CASA <1>: Warning: Ignoring XDG_SESSION_TYPE=wayland on Gnome. Use QT_QPA_PLATFORM=wayland to run on Wayland anyway.

(casalogger:326760): GLib-GIO-ERROR **: 19:20:49.426: Settings schema 'org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.xsettings' does not contain a key named 'antialiasing'

Also when I try to open the browser table using casabrowser .                   I get this message

Cell In[6], line 1
    casabrowser .
                 ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

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[Stephen Arbogast]

Well....   CASA  is built/meant  to run on Red Hat Linux  not  Ubuntu.   I have not used  Red Hat  since  mid  1990's or  whenever the  early days were.  

Maybe  Dr. Rich  Russel   might  comment  on  how he is  running  his  CASA ?

[Dr. Rich Russel]

Ubuntu

Bought a high end computer to handle the processing.

Rich

https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sara-list/636d13a5-f997-448a-9f72-bdee3217e2abn%40googlegroups.com

.

[Stephen Arbogast]

Which  Ubuntu Version?