CARTA - Cube Analysis and Rendering Tool for Astronomy#

Note

This documentation corresponds to CARTA version 5.1, which is a maintenance release following version 5.0 to address a few critical bugs.

CARTA User Manual for v5.1

Introduction
- CARTA development scope
- Client-Server architecture
- Codebase and releases
- Getting help
- Contributors
- Software citation
- Acknowledgment
- Copyright and license
Installation and configuration
- Site Deployment Mode
- User Deployment Mode
  - Installation via package managers
  - Installation of the stand-alone application (direct download)
- How to run CARTA?
- CARTA initialization flags
- Backend configuration file
- Browser options
- Log and configuration files
- Installation of fits2idia (converting FITS to HDF5-IDIA)
  - Installation via package managers
  - Other installation methods
- Installation on Windows
- Troubleshooting
Fundamental ideas
- GPU-accelerated client-side rendering
- Image matching
- Region of interest
- What “Active” means?
- Interacting with the graphical user interface
- Configuring the layout
- Controls and shortcuts
File browser
- Image files
- Stokes hypercube
- Multi-color image blending
- Region files
- Catalog files
Image viewer
- Rendering modes
- Changing image field of view
- Changing channel and polarization
- Single-panel view and multi-panel view
- Channel map view
- Coordinate system
- Cursor information
- Colorbar
- Toolbar
- Settings
- Image export for presentation
Raster rendering
- Histogram
- Clip Values
- Scaling functions
- Bias and contrast adjustment
- Colormaps
- NaN color
- Customization
- Settings
Contour rendering
- Reference steps to create contours
- Matching contour images to raster images
- Contour level generators
- Smoothing modes
- Styling contours
Vector field rendering
- Rendering modes
- Smoothing
- Absolute and fractional polarization intensity
- Thresholding and debiasing
- Adding and removing vector overlays
- Matching vector overlay images to raster images
- Styling vector overlays
Multi-color image blending
- Enabling multi-color blending
- Layer customization
- Region of interest and annotations
- Exporting color-blended images
- Save the recipe
Channel map control
- Channel map configuration
- Switching active channel
- Raster rendering configuration
- Region of interest and annotations
- Export channel maps
Animator
- Switching images and channels
- Polarization components
- Animation playback
Image list widget
- Setting active image
- Setting image order
- Close images
- Visibility of rendered image layers
- Matching status of images
- Matching reference images
- Spectral type for spectral matching
- Rest frequency for velocity conversion
- Settings
File info
Region list widget
- Cursor region
- Active region
- Region configuration
- Center a region
- Delete regions
- Lock and unlock regions
- Hide regions
- Import and export regions
Region configuration
- Coordinate systems
- Distance measurement tool
Cursor info
Statistics widget
- Flux density formulae
- Export as a text file
Histogram widget
- Interactivity
- Computation
- Styling
- Export
- Settings
Spatial profiler
- Cursor region or point region
- Line region or polyline region
- Interactivity
- Profile smoothing
- Styling
- Export
- Settings
Spectral profiler
- Single-profile mode
- Multiple-profile mode
- Interactivity
- Spectral convention and intensity unit
- Profile smoothing
- Moment map genertator
- Profile fitting
- Custom rest frequency
- Styling
- Export
- Settings
Profile smoothing
- Smoothing methods
Profile fitting
- Profile models
- Initial guesses
- Fitting results
- Fixing parameters
Stokes analysis widget
- Diagnostic plots
- Interactivity
- Spectral convention
- Smoothing
- Styling of plots
- Export data and plots
- Settings
Image fitting
- Fitting scope
- Initial guess: automatic
- Initial guess: manual
- Fitting solvers
- Trigger fitting and view results
Moment image generator
- Control parameters
- Trigger moment calculations and visualize results
Position-velocity image generator
- Production mode
  - Sampling process
- Preview mode
Spectral line query
- Makeing a query
- Filtering and sorting
- Visualizing line ID overlay
Online data query
- SIMBAD catalog query
- VizieR catalog query
- HiPS2FITS image query
Catalog visualization
- Supported catalog formats
- Basic user interface
- Catalog filtering and sorting
- Catalog image overlay
- Catalog 2D scatter plot
  - Linear fitting
- Catalog histogram plot
- Linked catalog visualization
Layout
- Configuring a layout
- Layout management - save, restore, rename, and delete
- Initial layout
- Dynamic layout
Preferences
- Global
- Render Configuration
- Contour Configuration
- Vector Overlay Configuration
- WCS and Image Overlay
- Layout
- Catalog
- Region
- Annotation
- Performance
- Telemetry
- Compatibility
- Log Events
Workspace
- Workspace saving and restoring
- Workspace sharing (experimental; carta-controller-only feature)
Log widget
Appendix A: version history
- Version 5.1
- Version 5.0
- Version 4.1
- Version 4.0
- Version 3.0
- Version 2.0
- Version 1.4
- Version 1.3.1
- Version 1.3
- Version 1.2.2
- Version 1.2.1
- Version 1.2
- Version 1.1
- Version 1.0.1
- Version 1.0
Appendix B: known issues
Appendix C: development log
- v5.0 -> v5.1
- v4.1 -> v5.0
- v4.0 -> v4.1
- v3.0 -> v4.0
- v2.0 -> v3.0
- v1.4 -> v2.0
- v1.3 -> v1.4
- v1.2 -> v1.3
- v1.1 -> v1.2
- v1.0 -> v1.1
Appendix D: preferences schema
- Preferences
Appendix E: JavaScript code snippets