The Canadian Galactic Plane Survey

J. English , A.R. Taylor , J.A. Irwin , S.M. Dougherty , S. Basu , C. Beichman , J. Brown , Y. Cao , C. Carignan , D. Crabtree , P. Dewdney , N. Duric , M. Fich , E. Gagnon , J. Galt , S. Germain , N. Ghazzali , S. J. Gibson , S. Godbout , A. Gray , D.A. Green , C. Heiles , M. Heyer , L. Higgs , S. Jean , D. Johnstone , G. Joncas , T. Landecker , W. Langer , D. Leahy , P. Martin , H. Matthews , W. McCutcheon , G. Moriarity-Scheiven , S. Pineault , C. Purton , R. Roger , D. Routledge , N. St-Louis , K. Tapping , S. Terebey , F. Vaneldik , D. Watson , T. Willis , H. Wendker , X. Zhang, PASA, 15 (1), 56
The html and gzipped postscript versions of this paper are in preprint form.
To access the final published version, download the pdf file
.

Next Section: Examples of the Scientific
Title/Abstract Page: The Canadian Galactic Plane
Previous Section: The Canadian Galactic Plane
Contents Page: Volume 15, Number 1

Contributions to the project by the Consortium and DRAO

The international collaborative effort of 46 scientists at 20 institutions will make possible a publicly-available database of high resolution, high-dynamic range images of the Galaxy. Table 1 lists each observational contribution and indicates the relevance to multi-phase studies of the interstellar medium (ISM).

   

Frequency (Wavelength) Telescope Comments
151 MHz (190 cm) MRAO CLFST The Mullard Radio Astronomical Observatory's Cambridge Low-Frequency Synthesis Telescope
  • continuum emission images
  • ionized and relativistic plasmas
  • first phase of observations nearing completion
232 & 327 MHz (130 & 92 cm) BAO Beijing Astronomical Observatory
  • continuum emission images
  • ionized and relativistic plasmas
  • potential contributors

408 & 1420 MHz (74 & 21 cm)

DRAO ST Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory Synthesis Telescope (with zero spacings from previous surveys for the continuum data and the DRAO 26 metre dish for the H I line data)
  • HI 21 cm line, continuum at 1420 and 408 MHz, polarization at 1420 MHz
  • neutral hydrogen intensity and velocities from HI cubes (256 channels; 1.2 km stex2html_wrap_inline370 per chan)
  • ionized and relativistic plasmas; spectral indices will allow the distinction between synchrotron emission and thermal emission
  • magnetic field information by using all 4 Stokes polarization parameters
  • begun March 1995 and will run about 5 years
  • pilot project has been completed; mosaics are currently becoming available without zero spacings
115 GHz (2.6 mm) FCRAO University of Massachusetts' Five Colleges Radio Astronomy Observatory
  • emission from CO(J=1-0) rotation transition
  • surrogate tracer of Htex2html_wrap_inline372
  • multi-feed, focal plane detector array and spectrometers generating dataset cubes
  • observations 1994 to March 1997; data available late 1997.
3 & 5 THz (100 & 60 tex2html_wrap_inline374m) IRAS Infrared Astronomical Satellite
  • radiation from dust
  • images reprocessed for higher resolution using HIRES (IPAC-JPL/Caltech)
  • images now in the public domain
Table 1: Contributions to CGPS/RCPG dataset

One of the factors which brought about the leading role of the Canadian scientists in this project was the upgrade of the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory's Synthesis Telescope (DRAO ST) to seven 9-metre antennas. One of the strategies which distinguishes the DRAO observations from those of other interferometers is that the U-V plane is fully sampled. This allows an unambiguous transformation to the plane of the sky. As well, single dish (zero-spacing) data, which contains emission on large angular scales, will be incorporated in order to ensure complete flux density measurements can be made for all modes of DRAO ST observations.

The DRAO ST project is surveying the region tex2html_wrap_inline376, which runs along the Perseus arm in one direction and the Cygnus arm in the other, with an angular resolution of tex2html_wrap_inline378 at 1420 MHz. The survey has a width in latitude, about the Galaxy mid-plane, of 9tex2html_wrap_inline380 at 1420 MHz and 15tex2html_wrap_inline380 at 408 MHz.


Next Section: Examples of the Scientific
Title/Abstract Page: The Canadian Galactic Plane
Previous Section: The Canadian Galactic Plane
Contents Page: Volume 15, Number 1

Welcome... About Electronic PASA... Instructions to Authors
ASA Home Page... CSIRO Publishing PASA
Browse Articles HOME Search Articles
© Copyright Astronomical Society of Australia 1997
ASKAP
Public