Subtraction of point sources from interferometric radio images through an algebraic forward modeling scheme

Understand

We present a method for subtracting point sources from interferometric radio images via forward modeling of the instrument response and involving an algebraic nonlinear minimization.

• The method is applied to simulated maps of the Murchison Wide-field Array but is generally useful in cases where only image data are available.
• After source subtraction, the residual maps have no statistical difference to the expected thermal noise distribution at all angular scales, indicating high effectiveness in the subtraction.
• Simulations indicate that the errors in recovering the source parameters decrease with increasing signal-to-noise ratio, which is consistent with the theoretical measurement errors.