Image synthesis in radio astronomy is done with interferometry, a powerful technique allowing observation of the sky with antenna arrays with otherwise inaccessible angular resolutions and sensitivities. However, image formation is a complicated and computationally expensive problem. The Bluebild algorithm offers a novel approach to image synthesis, leveraging fPCA to decompose the sky image into distinct energy eigenimages.
The PASC project Next-Generation Radio Interferometry brings together LASTRO, SCITAS, the EPFL Imaging Center, and CSCS to develop an HPC implementation of Bluebild, including validating, parallelizing, and adapting components of the algorithm for GPU computing.