RESOLVE: A new algorithm for aperture synthesis imaging of extended emission in radio astronomy

Abstract: We present RESOLVE, a new algorithm for radio aperture synthesis imaging of extended and diffuse emission in total intensity. The algorithm is derived using Bayesian statistical inference techniques, estimating the surface brightness in the sky assuming a priori log-normal statistics. RESOLVE not only estimates the measured sky brightness in total intensity, but also its spatial correlation structure, which is used to guide the algorithm to an optimal reconstruction of extended and diffuse sources. For a radio interferometer, it succeeds in deconvolving the effects of the instrumental point spread function during this process. Additionally, RESOLVE provides a map with an uncertainty estimate of the reconstructed surface brightness. Furthermore, with RESOLVE we introduce a new, optimal visibility weighting scheme that can be viewed as an extension to robust weighting. In tests using simulated observations, the algorithm shows improved performance against two standard imaging approaches for extended sources, Multiscale-CLEAN and the Maximum Entropy Method.