The Planck On-Flight Forecaster (POFF)

Abstract

The Planck On-Fligh Forecaster (POFF) is a tool to predict when a position in the sky will be within a selected angular distance from any receiver direction of the Planck satellite according to its pre-programmed observational strategy. This tool has been developed in the framework of the Planck LFI Core Team activities, but it is now used by the whole collaboration. In this paper we will describe the tool and its applications to plan observations with other instruments of point sources which are expected to enhance the possibilities of scientific exploitation of the Planck satellite data, once they will be publicly available. Collecting simultaneous multi-frequency data, like those that can be planned with the POFF, will help, on one hand, to investigate variability of point sources and, on the other, to reconstruct point source spectral energy distributions on wide frequency ranges minimizing the effects due to source variability. POFF is a combination of IDL routines which combine the publicly available information about the Planck scanning strategy and focal plane shape in order to identify if a given (list of) position(s) can be observable by the satellite at a given frequency and/or by selected receivers in a given time range. The output can be displayed with the desired time resolution and selecting among various sorting options. The code is not a Planck product, but it has been validated within the Planck LFI pipeline. The code format and the large number of options make it flexible and suitable for many applications, allowing to get results quickly. POFF is currently successfully used to plan activities within the Planck collaboration, including observations with several ground-based facilities, and it is distributed outside it.

6 figures, submitted to New Astronomy

References in corpus (9)

• CRATES: An All-Sky Survey of Flat-Spectrum Radio Sources
• The Australia Telescope 20 GHz Survey: The Source Catalogue
• Component separation methods for the Planck mission
• The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Source Catalog
• The properties of extragalactic radio sources selected at 20 GHz
• Comparison of filters for the detection of point sources in Planck simulations
• Making sky maps from Planck data
• Blind and non-blind source detection in WMAP 5-year maps
• Polarization of the WMAP Point Sources

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Planck early results XIV: ERCSC validation and extreme radio sources
• 37 GHz observations of narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxies
• The Planck-ATCA Co-eval Observations (PACO) project: the bright sample
• Absolute Calibration of the Radio Astronomy Flux Density Scale at 22 to 43 GHz Using Planck
• Radio-Gamma-ray connection and spectral evolution in 4C +49.22 (S4 1150+49): the Fermi, Swift and Planck view
• The Planck-ATCA Co-eval Observations (PACO) project: analysis of radio source properties between 5 and 217 GHz
• Planck intermediate results. XLV. Radio spectra of northern extragalactic radio sources
• The Simultaneous Medicina-Planck Experiment (SiMPlE): data acquisition, reduction and first results