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Low-Frequency Imaging of Fields at High Galactic Latitude with the Murchison Widefield Array 32 Element Prototype

Author(s)
Williams, Christopher Leigh; Hewitt, Jacqueline N; Levine, Alan M
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Abstract
The Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) is a new low-frequency, wide-field-of-view radio interferometer under development at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory in Western Australia. We have used a 32 element MWA prototype interferometer (MWA-32T) to observe two 50° diameter fields in the southern sky, covering a total of ~2700 deg[superscript 2], in order to evaluate the performance of the MWA-32T, to develop techniques for epoch of reionization experiments, and to make measurements of astronomical foregrounds. We developed a calibration and imaging pipeline for the MWA-32T, and used it to produce ~15' angular resolution maps of the two fields in the 110-200 MHz band. We perform a blind source extraction using these confusion-limited images, and detect 655 sources at high significance with an additional 871 lower significance source candidates. We compare these sources with existing low-frequency radio surveys in order to assess the MWA-32T system performance, wide-field analysis algorithms, and catalog quality. Our source catalog is found to agree well with existing low-frequency surveys in these regions of the sky and with statistical distributions of point sources derived from Northern Hemisphere surveys; it represents one of the deepest surveys to date of this sky field in the 110-200 MHz band.
Date issued
2012-07
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/80797
Department
MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research
Journal
The Astrophysical Journal
Publisher
IOP Publishing
Citation
Williams, Christopher L., Jacqueline N. Hewitt, Alan M. Levine, Angelica de Oliveira-Costa, Judd D. Bowman, Frank H. Briggs, B. M. Gaensler, et al. LOW-FREQUENCY IMAGING OF FIELDS AT HIGH GALACTIC LATITUDE WITH THE MURCHISON WIDEFIELD ARRAY 32 ELEMENT PROTOTYPE. The Astrophysical Journal 755, no. 1 (August 10, 2012): 47.
Version: Original manuscript
ISSN
0004-637X
1538-4357

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