The Rapid ASKAP Continuum Survey IV: continuum imaging at 1367.5 MHz and the first data release of RACS-mid

Abstract

The Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) is being used to undertake a campaign to rapidly survey the sky in three frequency bands across its operational spectral range. The first pass of the Rapid ASKAP Continuum Survey (RACS) at 887.5 MHz in the low band has already been completed, with images, visibility datasets, and catalogues made available to the wider astronomical community through the CSIRO ASKAP Science Data Archive (CASDA). This work presents details of the second observing pass in the mid band at 1367.5 MHz, RACS-mid, and associated data release comprising images and visibility datasets covering the whole sky south of declination $+$49${}^{\circ }$. This data release incorporates selective peeling to reduce artefacts around bright sources, as well as accurately modelled primary beam responses. The Stokes I images reach a median noise of 198 $\mu$Jy PSF${}^{-1}$ with a declination-dependent angular resolution of 8.1 to 47.5 arcsec that fills a niche in the existing ecosystem of large-area astronomical surveys. We also supply Stokes V images after application of a widefield leakage correction, with a median noise of 165 $\mu$Jy PSF${}^{-1}$. We find the residual leakage of Stokes I into V to be $\lesssim$ 0.9 to 2.4 % over the survey. This initial RACS-mid data release will be complemented by a future release comprising catalogues of the survey region. As with other RACS data releases, data products from this release will be made available through CASDA.

39 pages, 85 figure files, accepted for publication in PASA. For associated data see https://doi.org/10.25919/6mr6-rd83

References in corpus (32)

• Array Programming with NumPy
• The Last of FIRST: The Final Catalog and Source Identifications
• CMasher: Scientific colormaps for making accessible, informative and 'cmashing' plots
• An optimized algorithm for multi-scale wideband deconvolution of radio astronomical images
• The third realization of the International Celestial Reference Frame by very long baseline interferometry
• The Very Large Array Low-frequency Sky Survey Redux (VLSSr)
• Revisiting the radio interferometer measurement equation. I. A full-sky Jones formalism
• The LOFAR Two Meter Sky Survey: Deep Fields, I -- Direction-dependent calibration and imaging
• The Molonglo Galactic Plane Survey (MGPS-2): Compact Source Catalogue
• Polarimetry of 600 pulsars from observations at 1.4 GHz with the Parkes radio telescope
• Revisiting the radio interferometer measurement equation. II. Calibration and direction-dependent effects
• A radio spectral index map and catalogue at 147-1400 MHz covering 80 per cent of the sky
• The HI/OH/Recombination line survey of the inner Milky Way (THOR): data release 2 and HI overview
• A circular polarisation survey for radio stars with the Australian SKA Pathfinder
• Radio Detection of VIK J2318$-$3113, the Most Distant Radio-Loud Quasar ($z$=6.44)
• Deep Investigation of Neutral Gas Origins (DINGO): HI stacking experiments with early science data
• Discovery of ASKAP J173608.2-321635 as a Highly-Polarized Transient Point Source with the Australian SKA Pathfinder
• Exploring the physics behind the non-thermal emission from star-forming galaxies detected in gamma rays
• 21 new long-term variables in the GX 339-4 field: two years of MeerKAT monitoring
• Primary beam effects of radio astronomy antennas: I. Modelling the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) L-band beam using holography
• The merging galaxy cluster Abell 3266 at low radio frequencies
• Wide-Band Spectral Variability of Peaked Spectrum Sources
• Constraining the Radio Properties of the $z$=6.44 QSO VIK J2318$-$3113
• Continuum source catalog for the first APERTIF data release
• Evolutionary Map of the Universe (EMU):Compact radio sources in the SCORPIO field towards the Galactic plane
• GaLactic and Extragalactic All-sky Murchison Widefield Array (GLEAM) survey III: South Galactic Pole data release
• Radio detections of IR-selected runaway stellar bow shocks
• A Low Frequency Pilot Survey of Southern HII Regions in the Vela Constellation
• Characterising the Apertif primary beam response
• A depolarizing HI tidal tail in the western lobe of Fornax A
• Interpreting the statistical properties of high-z extragalactic sources detected by the South Pole Telescope survey
• The Nature and Likely Redshift of GLEAM J0917-0012

Cited by in corpus (20)

• The emission of interpulses by a 6.45-hour period coherent radio transient
• The population of tidal disruption events discovered with eROSITA
• The kinematic contribution to the cosmic number count dipole
• Contemporaneous optical-radio observations of a fast radio burst in a close galaxy pair
• Multi-wavelength properties of three new radio-powerful $z\sim 5.6$ quasi-stellar objects discovered from RACS
• Hints of auroral and magnetospheric polarized radio emission from the scallop-shell star 2MASS J05082729$-$2101444
• Cosmic dipole tensions: confronting the cosmic microwave background with infrared and radio populations of cosmological sources
• Comprehensive view on a $z\sim 6.5$ radio-loud QSO: from the radio to the optical/NIR to the X-ray band
• A Multiwavelength Machine-learning Approach to Classifying X-ray Sources in the Fields of Unidentified 4FGL-DR4 sources
• High-$z$ radio Quasars in RACS I: Selection, identification, and multi-wavelength properties
• RadioSED I: Bayesian inference of radio SEDs from inhomogeneous surveys
• Comprehensive analysis of the Apertif Fast Radio Burst sample: similarities with young, energetic neutron stars
• The ViCTORIA project: description of a multi-frequency radio survey of the Virgo galaxy cluster
• Searching for Radio Transients with Inverted Spectra in Epoch 1 of VLASS and VCSS, and Identification of a Sample of Candidate Relativistic Nuclear Transients
• Probing the detectability of electromagnetic signatures from Galactic isolated black holes
• From 100 MHz to 10 GHz: Unveiling the spectral evolution of the X-shaped radio galaxy in Abell 3670
• A FLASH on Blazars: Capturing the Radio Realm of 4FGL Blazars with SKAO Pathfinders
• LOFAR 58 MHz Legacy Survey of the 3CRR Catalog
• Enhanced Astrometry of the Rapid ASKAP Continuum Survey for Precise Localisation of Fast Radio Bursts
• Wide-field GMRT imaging of X-shaped Radio-Galaxies: Spectral properties of 4C32.25 and 4C61.23