ALMA Solar Script Generator: First step towards automated and robust processing of solar ALMA science data

Miroslav Barta, European ALMA Regional Center - Czech node, Astronomical Institute AS CR, CZ-25165 Ondrejov

After more than three years of development and commissioning Solar ALMA Observing Mode has been introduced in early 2017 for acquiring science solar data with the ALMA observatory. The solar observations still work in so called "non-standard mode" which also means that the data calibration and interferometric synthesis (imaging) is being done manually - the Data Analysts at the ALMA Regional Centers (ARCs) or PIs (if they wish and are able to re-process the data) have to prepare 'ad hoc' calibration and imaging scripts tailored to a given dataset. This is a big difference to the standard (non-solar) ALMA observations, where the data undergo automated and robust pipeline calibration and imaging. However, even for the non-solar data the pipeline was not always the standard: Their calibration had started (a few years ago) also as fully manual, later being replaced by an intermediate semi-automated approach based on the "Script Generator" - a Python utility that researches inside the ALMA Measurement Set and creates the tailored calibration and imaging scripts automatically. In order to approach the Solar ALMA Observing Mode towards the standard calibration pipeline, we have started developing the Solar Script Generator - the collection of Python classes and their methods derived from those used in the non-solar Script Generator that incorporates specifics of the solar calibration and imaging procedures. In this contribution we shall present the current state and our vision of solar ALMA science data processing.