AARTFAAC flux density calibration and Northern hemisphere catalogue at 60 MHz

Open Access
Authors
Publication date 01-2019
Journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Volume | Issue number 482 | 2
Pages (from-to) 2502-2514
Organisations
  • Faculty of Science (FNWI) - Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy (API)
Abstract
We present a method for calibrating the flux density scale for images generated by the Amsterdam ASTRON Radio Transient Facility And Analysis Centre (AARTFAAC). AARTFAAC produces a stream of all-sky images at a rate of 1 s in order to survey the Northern hemisphere for short duration, low-frequency transients, such as the prompt doneelectromagnetic counterpart to gravitational wave events, magnetar flares, blazars, and other as of yet unobserved phenomena. Therefore, an independent flux density scaling solution per image is calculated via bootstrapping, comparing the measured apparent brightness of sources in the field to a reference catalogue. However, the lack of accurate flux density measurements of bright sources below 74 MHz necessitated the creation of the AARTFAAC source catalogue, at 60 MHz, which contains 167 sources across the Northern hemisphere. Using this as a reference results in a sufficiently high number of detected sources in each image to calculate a stable and accurate flux scale per 1 s snapshot, in real-time.
Document type Article
Note This article has been accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society © 2019. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.
Language English
Published at https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/sty2810
Other links https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85067049891
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