Abstract
A brief description of the methodology of construction, contents and usage of the Planck
Early Release Compact Source Catalogue (ERCSC), including the Early
Cold Cores (ECC) and the Early Sunyaev-Zeldovich (ESZ) cluster catalogue
is provided. The catalogue is based on data that consist of mapping the
entire sky once and 60% of the sky a second time by Planck,
thereby comprising the first high sensitivity radio/submillimetre
observations of the entire sky. Four source detection algorithms were
run as part of the ERCSC pipeline. A Monte-Carlo algorithm based on the
injection and extraction of artificial sources into the Planck
maps was implemented to select reliable sources among all extracted
candidates such that the cumulative reliability of the catalogue is
≥90%. There is no requirement on completeness for the ERCSC. As a result
of the Monte-Carlo assessment of reliability of sources from the
different techniques, an implementation of the PowellSnakes source
extraction technique was used at the five frequencies between 30 and
143GHz while the SExtractor technique was used between 217 and 857GHz.
The 10σ photometric flux density limit of the catalogue at |b| > 30°
is 0.49, 1.0, 0.67, 0.5, 0.33, 0.28, 0.25, 0.47 and 0.82 Jy at each of
the nine frequencies between 30 and 857GHz. Sources which are up to a
factor of ~2 fainter than this limit, and which are present in “clean”
regions of the Galaxy where the sky background due to emission from the
interstellar medium is low, are included in the ERCSC if they meet the
high reliability criterion. The Planck ERCSC sources have known
associations to stars with dust shells, stellar cores, radio galaxies,
blazars, infrared luminous galaxies and Galactic interstellar medium
features. A significant fraction of unclassified sources are also
present in the catalogs. In addition, two early release catalogs that
contain 915 cold molecular cloud core candidates and 189 SZ cluster
candidates that have been generated using multifrequency algorithms are
presented. The entire source list, with more than 15000 unique sources,
is ripe for follow-up characterisation with Herschel, ATCA, VLA, SOFIA, ALMA and other ground-based observing facilities.
Original language | English |
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Article number | A7 |
Number of pages | 26 |
Journal | Astronomy and Astrophysics |
Volume | 536 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2011 |
MoE publication type | A1 Journal article-refereed |
Keywords
- Cosmology: observations
- surveys
- catalogs
- radio continuum: general
- submillimeter: general