LABOCA is the Large Apex BOlometer CAmera. It consists of 295 bolometers observing at a wavelength of 870 microns (frequency 345 GHz). It has been built by the Bolometer Development Group at the MPIfR (see the official LABOCA web page).
NEW! Here is a short introduction on how Laboca data are observed, and how to reduce them with BoA (presentation that I gave in the MPIfR on 2008, Oct. 24th).
An older presentation, that I gave on 2007, Sept. 24th, is available here. It contains a bit more about observing, and a bit less about BoA.
BoA is a new Bolometer array data Analysis package, specifically developed for the bolometer instruments at the APEX telescope. It is mostly written in python, with a few computing-intensive routines written in Fortran 95. BoA is an open-source project, complying with the terms of the GNU General Public Licence. Most of its development was done by Reinhold Schaaf, Alexandre Beelen and myself, with additional contributions by a few other persons. More details, including installation instructions, are available on the BoA Wiki.
The 2008 January version of the source code is available here:
This tarball contains a setup.py file. In principle, installing (or updating) the software should be as easy as:
user> python setup.py build user> python setup.py install --prefix=(destination) --install-lib=(destination)
However, BoA relies on quite a few external packages (e.g. pgplot, cfitsio, numpy) which also have to be installed. Please visit the BoA Wiki and read the manual for more on this topic.
Here you can download a .pkg file, which will install BoA and the needed packages on your system. After download, double click on the .tgz file to uncompress it, then double click on the .pkg file, and follow the installation instructions. At the end of the installation, the source code of BoA and ancillary files (scripts, RCP files...) will reside in /Applications/BoA/. In addition, the installer copies a few required libraries in /usr/local/lib/. Finally, two startupt scripts (.boarc.csh and .boarc.sh) are copied to your HOME directory. You have to source one of these scripts (depending wether you are using tcsh or bash), then you can start BoA by typing "boa" in a shell window.
Download BoA for Mac package