DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17199834
title: Reproduction package for the paper: "A Hyperactive Fast Radio Burst Pinpointed in an SMC-like Satellite Host Galaxy"

description: Reproduction package for the paper "A Hyperactive Fast Radio Burst Pinpointed in an SMC-Like Satellite Host Galaxy"

Author list: M. Bhardwaj†, M. P. Snelders†, J. W. T. Hessels, A. Gil de Paz, S. Bhandari, B. Marcote, A. Kirichenko, O. S. Ould-Boukattine, F. Kirsten, E. K. Bempong-Manful, V. Bezrukovs, J. D. Bray, S. Buttaccio, A. Corongiu, R. Feiler, M. P. Gawroński, M. Giroletti, D. M. Hewitt, M. Lindqvist, G. Maccaferri, A. Moroianu, K. Nimmo, Z. Paragi, W. Puchalska, N. Wang, D. Williams-Baldwin and J.P. Yuan

†: Co-first authors of this manuscript.

Journal of the publication: Astrophysical Journal Letters (ApJL)

Title: A Hyperactive FRB Pinpointed in an SMC-Like Satellite Host Galaxy

ApJL link: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ae0b68

arXiv link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.11915

ADS link: https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2025arXiv250611915B/abstract

Astrophysical Journal Letters DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/ae0b68

This work was made possible with the following funding: Canada Excellence Research Chair in Transient Astrophysics (CERC-2022-00009); an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (‘EuroFlash’; Grant agreement No. 101098079); and an NWO-Vici grant (‘AstroFlash’; VI.C.192.045). The full funding statement can be found in the paper under the section `Acknowledgements'. 

Raw Data:



Uncalibrated visibilities of FRB 20240114A and its calibration sources can be downloaded from the JIVE/EVN archive, https://archive.jive.eu, under project codes EK056A and EK056B.

All GTC observations will be publicly available on the GTC public archive (https://gtc.sdc.cab.inta-csic.es/gtc/) after their one year proprietary period has ended.


Software:

All the software used in this work are open source and listed below. The data was reduced, processed and analyzed on multiple machines with various operating systems, which include, but are not limited to, macOS, Ubuntu and centOS.



SFXC (https://github.com/jive-vlbi/sfxc)

CASA (https://casadocs.readthedocs.io/en/stable/)

Heimdall (https://sourceforge.net/p/heimdall-astro/wiki/Home/)

DSPSR (https://sourceforge.net/projects/dspsr/)

FETCH (https://github.com/devanshkv/fetch)

AIPS (https://www.aips.nrao.edu/)

DIFMAP (https://www.cv.nrao.edu/adass/adassVI/shepherdm.html)

Prospector (https://prospect.readthedocs.io/en/stable/)


 

Figures and Tables:

The files in this Zenodo package should be self-explanatory. E.g. `fig1_tab1_family_plot.tar' contains all the scripts/notebooks/files needed to make figure 1 and table 1,  and also contains figure 1 and table 1 themself.

 

fig1_tab1_family_plot.tar:



Contains 20 filterbank files, which, if sorted A>Z, correspond to the bursts A01-A07, B01-B13 (as in the paper).

Each filterbank file is already coherently and incoherently dedispersed to a dispersion measure value of 527.723 pc/cm^3 (as per the filename). 

Every filterbank file has a corresponding flag file (*.flags), which is a plain text file which contains which channel numbers in the filterbanks should be flagged due to RFI or subband edges

`burst_toa_converter.py' (can also be found at https://github.com/MSnelders/FRB-Burst-TOA) is a helper script that determines the time-of-arrival of an FRB in the Solar System Barycentre. 

 `family_plot_FRB20240114A.ipynb' is the main jupyter notebook. It loads in the filterbank files, does the analysis, makes figure 1 and table 1. It also creates the files `fig1_family_plot.pdf' and `latest_toa.pkl' & `toa_df.pkl' which are pandas DataFrames which are created while determining the ToA of the bursts.


 

fig2_localization_plot.tar:



Contains 20 fits files, which each contain the dirty map of each individual burst. The files, if sorted A>Z, correspond to the bursts A01-A07, B01-B13 (as in the paper).

Also contains the folder `visibilities' (i.e. u,v-datapoints), which contain the calibrated burst visibilities from which the aforementions dirty maps are created. These visibilities are provided in UVFITS format and in the CASA MeasurementSet format. 

The bursts are individually fitted in multiplot_ek056a/b.ipynb.

The fitted results are combined in `fig2_dirty_bursts_global_map.ipynb', and this script also produces `fig2_burst_localizations_dpi300.pdf'


 

fig6_elevation_plot.tar:



pr318a.sum, pr318a.vex, pr318a.vex.df contain the scheduled telescope information, which is used to create figure 6 - i.e. the plot with the elevation and order of the observed sources as a function of time. The .sum file contains contains this information in human-readable form. The .vex file contains the same information, but in less human-readable form. The .vex.df contains the same information but in a parsed pandas DataFrame. The experiment code pr318a belongs to EK056A - i.e., the first epoch. 

Likewise for pr319a.*, which corresponds to EK056B - i.e. the second epoch.

It also contains `toa_df.pkl', which is the same file as in fig1_tab1_family_plot.tar, and that contains the ToA's of the bursts. 

`plot_runs_r147.ipynb' combines all the information and creates `obs_timeline_r147.pdf', i.e. figure 6 in the paper. 


 

fig7_spw_plot.tar:



'spws.txt' is a plain text file which maps the spectral windows (spws) numbers to the corresponding observing frequencies.

'r147_spw_coverage.ipynb' creates `r147_spw_coverage.pdf' - i.e. figure 7 of the paper. 


 

End-to-End analysis scripts

The Python code/Jupyter notebooks in the tarfiles are end-to-end.

 

Intermediate data products

The filterbank files in `fig1_tab1_family_plot.tar' are intermediate data products (a coule of gigabytes in size total). These are derived from the raw voltages which were recorded by the Effelsberg Radio Telescope (i.e. baseband data/voltage data/wavefront data). Due to the Zenodo file size limitations I cannot upload the raw voltages.

Please contact me at snelders@astron.nl or m.p.snelders@uva.nl or via ORCID to request these files. If I do not respond please contact prof. dr. Jason Hessels and dr. Franz Kirsten.