The Rapid ASKAP Continuum Survey I: Design and First Results
D. McConnell, C. L. Hale, E. Lenc, J. K. Banfield, George Heald, A. W. Hotan, James K. Leung, Vanessa A. Moss, Tara Murphy, Andrew O'Brien, Joshua Pritchard, Wa… 展开作者
D. McConnell, C. L. Hale, E. Lenc, J. K. Banfield, George Heald, A. W. Hotan, James K. Leung, Vanessa A. Moss, Tara Murphy, Andrew O'Brien, Joshua Pritchard, Wasim Raja, Elaine M. Sadler, Adam Stewart, Alec J. M. Thomson, M. Whiting, James R. Allison, S. W. Amy, C. Anderson, Lewis Ball, Keith W. Bannister, Martin Bell, Douglas C. -J. Bock, Russ Bolton, J. D. Bunton, A. P. Chippendale, J. D. Collier, F. R. Cooray, T. J. Cornwell, P. J. Diamond, P. G. Edwards, N. Gupta, Douglas B. Hayman, Ian Heywood, C. A. Jackson, Bärbel S. Koribalski, Karen Lee-Waddell, N. M. McClure-Griffiths, Alan Ng, Ray P. Norris, Chris Phillips, John E. Reynolds, Daniel N. Roxby, Antony E. T. Schinckel, Matt Shields, Chenoa Tremblay, A. Tzioumis, M. A. Voronkov, Tobias Westmeier
The Rapid ASKAP Continuum Survey (RACS) is the first large-area survey to be conducted with the full 36-antenna Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) telescope. RACS will provide a shallow model of the ASKAP sky that will aid the calibration of future deep ASKAP surveys. RACS will cover the whole sky visible from the ASKAP site in Western Australia, and will cover the full ASKAP band of $700-1800$ MHz. The RACS images are generally deeper than the existing NRAO VLA Sky Survey (NVSS) and Sydney University Molonglo Sky Survey (SUMSS) radio surveys and have better spatial resolution. All RACS survey products will be public, including radio images (with $\sim 15$ arcsecond resolution) and catalogues of about three million source components with spectral index and polarisation information. In this paper, we present a description of the RACS survey and the first data release of 903 images covering the sky south of declination $+41^\circ$ made over a 288 MHz band centred at 887.5 MHz.
Science results from pilot surveys with the full 36-antenna Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) have increased strongly over the last few years. This trend is likely to continue with full surveys scheduled to commence later this year. Thanks to novel Phased Array Feeds each ASKAP pointing covers around 30 square degr, making it a fast survey machine delivering high-resolution radio images of the sky. Among recent science highlights are the studies of neutral hydrogen in the Magellanic Clouds as well as nearby galaxy groups and clusters, catalogs of millions of radio continuum …
The Boolardy Engineering Test Array is a 6 x 12 m dish interferometer and the prototype of the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP), equipped with the first generation of ASKAP's phased array feed (PAF) receivers. These facilitate rapid wide-area imaging via the deployment of simultaneous multiple beams within a 30 square degree field of view. By cycling the array through 12 interleaved pointing positions and using 9 digitally formed beams we effectively mimic a traditional 1 hour x 108 pointing survey, covering 150 square degrees over 711 - 1015 MHz in 12 hours of observing ti…
The Rapid ASKAP Continuum Survey (RACS) VIII: total intensity and circular polarization images and catalogues at 887.5 MHz from RACS-low2
CSIRO Space and Astronomy（CSIRO空间与天文学）；Sydney Institute for Astronomy, School of Physics, The University of Sydney（悉尼大学物理学院悉尼天文研究所）；Australian SKA Regional Centre (AusSRC), Curtin University（科廷大学澳大利亚SKA区域中心）；SKA Observatory, SKA-Low Science Operations Centre（SKA天文台SKA低频科学运营中心）
Source finding is one of the most challenging tasks in upcoming radio continuum surveys with SKA precursors, such as the Evolutionary Map of the Universe (EMU) survey of the Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) telescope. The resolution, sensitivity, and sky coverage of such surveys is unprecedented, requiring new features and improvements to be made in existing source finders. Among them, reducing the false detection rate, particularly in the Galactic plane, and the ability to associate multiple disjoint islands into physical objects. To bridge this gap, we developed a new source finder, based o…
The recent increase in well-localised fast radio bursts (FRBs) has facilitated in-depth studies of global FRB host properties, the source circumburst medium, and the potential impacts of these environments on the burst properties. The Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) has localised 11 FRBs with sub-arcsecond to arcsecond precision, leading to sub-galaxy localisation regions in some cases and those covering much of the host galaxy in others. The method used to astrometrically register the FRB image frame for ASKAP, in order to align it with images taken at other wavelengths, …
The Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) presents a number of challenges in the area of source finding and cataloguing. The data rates and image sizes are very large, and require automated processing in a high-performance computing environment. This requires development of new tools, that are able to operate in such an environment and can reliably handle large datasets. These tools must also be able to accommodate the different types of observations ASKAP will make: continuum imaging, spectral-line imaging, transient imaging. The ASKAP project has developed a source-finder know…
EMU is a wide-field radio continuum survey planned for the new Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) telescope, due to be completed in 2012. The primary goal of EMU is to make a deep ($\sim 10μ$Jy/bm rms) radio continuum survey of the entire Southern Sky at 1.4 GHz, extending as far North as +30$°$ declination, with a 10 arcsec resolution. EMU is expected to detect and catalog about 70 million galaxies, including typical star-forming galaxies up to z=1, powerful starbursts to even greater redshifts, and AGNs to the edge of the Universe. EMU will undoubtedly discover new classes …
The process of determining the number and characteristics of sources in astronomical images is so fundamental to a large range of astronomical problems that it is perhaps surprising that no standard procedure has ever been defined that has well understood properties with a high degree of statistical rigour on completeness and reliability. There are now a large number of commonly used software tools for accomplishing this task, typically with different tools being used for images acquired using different technologies. Despite this, there have been relatively few quantitative analyses of the rob…
We present a detailed analysis of four of the most widely used radio source finding packages in radio astronomy, and a program being developed for the Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) telescope. The four packages; SExtractor, SFind, IMSAD and Selavy are shown to produce source catalogues with high completeness and reliability. In this paper we analyse the small fraction (~1%) of cases in which these packages do not perform well. This small fraction of sources will be of concern for the next generation of radio surveys which will produce many thousands of sources on a daily …
In the lead-up to the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project, several next-generation radio telescopes and upgrades are already being built around the world. These include APERTIF (The Netherlands), ASKAP (Australia), eMERLIN (UK), VLA (USA), e-EVN (based in Europe), LOFAR (The Netherlands), Meerkat (South Africa), and the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA). Each of these new instruments has different strengths, and coordination of surveys between them can help maximise the science from each of them. A radio continuum survey is being planned on each of them with the primary science objective of und…
In Dai et al. (2016) we developed a formalism for computing variance images from standard, interferometric radio images containing time and frequency information. Variance imaging with future radio continuum surveys allows us to identify radio pulsars and serves as a complement to conventional pulsar searches which are most sensitive to strictly periodic signals. Here, we carry out simulations to predict the number of pulsars that we can uncover with variance imaging on future continuum surveys. We show that the Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) Evolutionary Map of the Universe (EMU) survey ca…
In this chapter we provide an overview of the science enabled by radio continuum surveys in the SKA era, focusing on galaxy/galaxy cluster physics and evolution studies, and other relevant continuum science in the >2020 scientific framework. We outline a number of 'reference' radio-continuum surveys for SKA1 that can address such topics, and comprehensively discuss the most critical science requirements that we have identified. We highlight what should be achieved by SKA1, to guarantee a major leap forwards with respect to the pre-SKA era, considering the science advances expected in the comin…
One of the Survey Science Projects that the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) telescope will do in its first few years of operation is a study of the 21-cm line of HI and the 18-cm lines of OH in the Galactic Plane and the Magellanic Clouds and Stream. The wide-field ASKAP can survey a large area with very high sensitivity much faster than a conventional telescope because of its focal plane array of receiver elements. The brightness sensitivity for the widespread spectral line emission of the interstellar medium depends on the beam size and the survey speed. In the GASKAP su…
EMU is a wide-field radio continuum survey planned for the new Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) telescope. The primary goal of EMU is to make a deep (rms ~ 10 microJy/beam) radio continuum survey of the entire Southern Sky at 1.3 GHz, extending as far North as +30 degrees declination, with a resolution of 10 arcsec. EMU is expected to detect and catalogue about 70 million galaxies, including typical star-forming galaxies up to z~1, powerful starbursts to even greater redshifts, and AGNs to the edge of the visible Universe. It will undoubtedly discover new classes of object.…
