Introduction to MeqSilhouette

MeqSilhouette is a synthetic data generation software for VLBI observations that applies realistic propagation path effects to sky models. The current version of MeqSilhouette (MEQSv2), described in Natarajan et al. (2022), is capable of generating fully polarised, time-variable, spectrally-resolved sky models and propagation path effects including (but not limited to) instrumental polarisation, updated atmospheric effects and pointing offsets, time-variable antenna gains, and bandpass effects. An earlier version, v1, was published in Blecher et al. (2017) and implemented a subset of the features in v2.

Although the primary aim of MeqSilhouette is to generate synthetic data for Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) observations, it can be used to generate synthetic data for any mm-VLBI array. MeqSilhouette continues to be developed and will be updated to include new features and capabilities to generate realistic synthetic data for lower frequency VLBI observations.

This documentation explains the steps necessary for installing and using MeqSilhouette.