| 7th of December 2018 |
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| The LOFAR Two-metre Sky Survey |
| by Shimwell et al. |
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A large international team, including current and former CASS staff,
has issued the first data release from the LOFAR Two-metre Sky Survey
(LoTSS). LoTSS is a sensitive, high-resolution 120-168 MHz survey of
the entire northern sky currently underway with the LOFAR (LOw
Frequency ARray) telescope. The first data release catalogues 325,694
in a 424 square degree region of sky (which is 2% of the eventual
coverage).
The figure above shows the image rms, frequency, and angular resolution (linearly proportional to the radius of the markers) of the LoTSS first data release in comparison to a selection of existing wide-area completed (grey) and upcoming (blue) radio surveys. The horizontal lines show the frequency coverage for surveys with large fractional bandwidths. The green, blue, and red lines show an equivalent sensitivity to LoTSS for compact radio sources with spectral indices of -0.7, -1.0, and -1.5, respectively. As illustrated, the ASKAP EMU survey will cover the southern sky to a similar sensitivity (but at a higher frequency) as the northern hemisphere LoTSS. Full details are available in the preprint of the paper which will be published early next year in Astronomy & Astrophysics. |