Conclusions

From the above analysis, we conclude that the entire processes of flagging, imaging and calibration, at least for compact sources, can be automated and the various parameters be tweaked to keep the chain of operations robust.

The scientific benefits of an automated and robust pipe-line are obvious. Hence we feel that it is worthwhile to make an effort to implement this automation as a software (single program or, probably more appropriately, a pipe-line consisting of a chain of otherwise independent programs).

The longer term benefit of this approach that we foresee are two:

1. The project of automating the flagging-calibrating-imaging operations, while will be immediately useful for a large project to build GMRT calibrater list, it will also be a good first step towards automating these operations possibly even for more complex sources.

2. Most other modern observatories are actively pursuing programs for as much automation in data processing as possible. These efforts are motivated by relatively large amount of data these new telescopes will generate as well as by the fact the man-made RFI environment, particularly at lower frequencies, is only going to deteriorate. Besides keeping the software and data analysis practices at NCRA modern, this also opens up another obviously useful possibility: that of quasi on-line imaging (at least for quick-look purposes). The structure of GMRT on-line control, data acquisition and off-line software systems is well suited for this work.