Approximating W projection as a separable kernel

W projection is a commonly-used approach to allow interferometric imaging to be accelerated by Fast Fourier Transforms (FFTs), but it can require a huge amount of storage for convolution kernels. The kernels are not separable, but we show that they can be closely approximated by separable kernels. The error scales with the fourth power of the field of view, and so is small enough to be ignored at mid to high frequencies. We also show that hybrid imaging algorithms combining W projection with either faceting, snapshotting, or W stacking allow the error to be made arbitrarily small, making the approximation suitable even for high-resolution wide-field instruments.

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