Open AccessThe Rhodes/HartRAO 2326‐MHz radio continuum survey
Author(s) -
Jonas Justin L.,
Baart Eddie E.,
Nicolson George D.
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
monthly notices of the royal astronomical society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.058
H-Index - 383
eISSN - 1365-2966
pISSN - 0035-8711
DOI - 10.1046/j.1365-8711.1998.01367.x
Subject(s) - physics , sky , telescope , radio telescope , data reduction , astrophysics , angular resolution (graph drawing) , radio astronomy , optical telescope , optics , astronomy , mathematics , combinatorics , computer science , data mining
We have made scanning observations with the HartRAO 26‐m radio telescope to obtain a pencil‐beam map of 67 per cent of the sky at 2326 MHz. This is the highest resolution and highest frequency radio continuum map of this type made of such a large area of sky. In this paper we describe the observations and data reduction procedures used to produce the survey. The resulting map has an angular resolution (HPBW) of 20 arcmin, and the rms pointing accuracy is 1.2 arcmin. The rms noise fluctuations are less than 30‐mK T FB over the whole map. We estimate that the uncertainty in the temperature scale is less than 5 per cent, and that the error in the absolute zero level is better than 80‐mK T FB in any direction. High‐contrast half‐tone images of the data with a model of the diffuse galactic background subtracted are presented. These images show many complex emission structures up to and beyond 50° latitude, and illustrate the quality of the data. Extracts from the survey data are available via FTP by arrangement with the authors.