THE BOLOCAM GALACTIC PLANE SURVEY: SURVEY DESCRIPTION AND DATA REDUCTION

By J. Aguirre, A. Ginsburg, M. Dunham, M. Drosback, J. Bally, C. Battersby, E. T. Bradley, C. Cyganowski, D. Dowell, N. Evans II and 6 more. 2010

243 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present the Bolocam Galactic Plane Survey (BGPS), a 1.1 mm continuum survey at 33″ effective resolution of 170 deg2 of the Galactic Plane visible from the northern hemisphere. The BGPS is one of the first large area, systematic surveys of the Galactic Plane in the millimeter continuum without pre-selected targets. The survey is contiguous over the range −10.5 ⩽ l ⩽ 90.5, |b| ⩽ 0.5. Toward the Cygnus X spiral arm, the coverage was flared to |b| ⩽ 1.5 for 75.5 ⩽ l ⩽ 87.5. In addition, cross-cuts to |b| ⩽ 1.5 were made at l= 3, 15, 30, and 31. The total area of this section is 133 deg2. With the exception of the increase in latitude, no pre-selection criteria were applied to the coverage in this region. In addition to the contiguous region, four targeted regions in the outer Galaxy were observed: IC1396 (9 deg2, 97.5 ⩽ l ⩽ 100.5, 2.25 ⩽ b ⩽ 5.25), a region toward the Perseus Arm (4 deg2 centered on l = 111, b = 0 near NGC 7538), W3/4/5 (18 deg2, 132.5 ⩽ l ⩽ 138.5), and Gem OB1 (6 deg2, 187.5 ⩽ l ⩽ 193.5). The survey has detected approximately 8400 clumps over the entire area to a limiting non-uniform 1σ noise level in the range 11–53 mJy beam−1 in the inner Galaxy. The BGPS source catalog is presented in a previously published companion paper. This paper details the survey observations and data reduction methods for the images. We discuss in detail the determination of astrometric and flux density calibration uncertainties and compare our results to the literature. Data processing algorithms that separate astronomical signals from time-variable atmospheric fluctuations in the data timestream are presented. These algorithms reproduce the structure of the astronomical sky over a limited range of angular scales and produce artifacts in the vicinity of bright sources. Based on simulations, we find that extended emission on scales larger than about 5.′9 is nearly completely attenuated (>90%) and the linear scale at which the attenuation reaches 50% is 3.′8. Comparison with other millimeter-wave data sets implies a possible systematic offset in flux calibration, for which no cause has been discovered. This presentation serves as a companion and guide to the public data release (http://irsa.ipac.caltech.edu/Missions/bolocam.html) through NASA's Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC) Infrared Science Archive (IRSA). New data releases will be provided through IPAC-IRSA with any future improvements in the reduction. The BGPS provides a complementary long-wavelength spectral band for the ongoing ATLASGAL and Herschel-SPIRE surveys, and an important database and context for imminent observations with SCUBA-2 and ALMA.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3344dbabd8642922fd2bb07297e11d654aa8d769

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

Citations in the corpus

ATLASGAL — towards a complete sample of massive star forming clumps ⋆ (2014, background): “…Molinari et al. 2010); APEX Telescope Large Area Survey of the Galaxy (ATLASGAL), Schuller et al. 2009; Bolocam Galactic Plane Survey (BGPS), Aguirre et al. 2011; methanol multibeam (MMB) survey, Caswell et al. 2010; and the Co-ordinated Radio and Infrared Survey for High-Mass Star…”
The ATLASGAL survey: a catalog of dust condensations in the Galactic plane (2013, methodology): “ATLASGAL also has a substantial overlap with the Bolocam Galactic Plane Survey (BGPS, Aguirre et al. 2011) at 1.1 mm and partially overlaps with the JCMT SCUBA-2 survey of the Galactic plane (Di Francesco 2008) at 850µm.”
Hi-GAL, the Herschel infrared Galactic Plane Survey: Photometric maps and compact source catalogues: First data release for the inner Milky Way: +68° ≥ l ≥ -70° (2016, methodology): “…between roughly +60◦ and −60◦ at 870µm, the JPS survey (Moore & et al., 2015), using the JCMT antenna in Hawaii, gives deeper coverage at somewhat higher resolution in the northern part of this same region at 850µm, while the Bolocam GPS covers the 1st quadrant at 1.1mm (Aguirre et al., 2011).”
THE WISE CATALOG OF GALACTIC H ii REGIONS (2013, methodology): “This research has made use of data from the ATLASGAL, BGPS, CGPS, CORNISH, HOPS, MALT90, MAGPIS, 16 The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, 212:1 (18pp), 2014 May Anderson et al. NVSS, SGPS, SUMSS, and VGPS surveys.”
ATLASGAL - properties of a complete sample of Galactic clumps (2017, methodology): “…efficiency (CFE), and was calculated from the ratio of dense gas as determined from the dust emission mapped by the Bolocam Galactic Plane Survey (BGPS; Aguirre et al. 2011) and the cloud mass as calculated from the 13CO (1-0) data provided by the Galactic Ring Survey (GRS; Jackson et al. 2006).”
Scuba-2: Iterative map-making with the sub-millimetre user reduction facility (2013, methodology): “…Utility (CRUSH, Kovács 2008a) for the Submillimeter High-Angular Resolution Camera 2 (SHARC-2), the pipeline developed for the Bolocam Galactic Plane Survey (Aguirre et al. 2011), and the Bolometer array data Analysis software (BoA) for the Large APEX BOlometer CAmera (LABOCA, Schuller 2012).”
Scuba-2: On-sky calibration using submillimetre standard sources (2013, methodology): “Current instruments with comparable wavebands include LABOCA, on the APEX telescope (Siringo et al. 2009) which measures a calibration accuracy of 10 per cent at 870µm and BOLOCAM, at the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory, with an 8 per cent uncertainty at 1.1 millimetres (Aguirre et al. 2011).”
Characterizing precursors to stellar clusters with Herschel (2011, methodology): “The first method for determining the dense clump source masks was to use Bolocat clump masks derived from the BGPS (Aguirre et al. 2011; Rosolowsky et al. 2010) at 1.1 mm.”
Star Formation in the Milky Way and Nearby Galaxies (2012, methodology): “Dunham et al. (2011b) have compared a subset of clumps in the BGPS catalog (Aguirre et al. 2011; Rosolowsky et al. 2010) with kinematic distances to the Heiderman-Lada (HL) criterion for efficient star formation and to the Kauffman-Pillai (KP) criterion for massive star formation.”
Molecular Clouds in the Milky Way (2015, background): “Dust in molecular clouds is responsible for a substantial fraction of the Galactic farIR emission (Planck Collaboration XXIII et al. 2014) and millimeter wave continuum (Schuller et al. 2009, Aguirre et al. 2011).”
Dense gas in the Galactic central molecular zone is warm and heated by turbulence (2015, unknown): “1GHz = 1.1 g cm−2 Bally et al. 2010; Aguirre et al. 2011; Ginsburg et al. 2013).”
Hierarchical fragmentation and differential star formation in the Galactic ‘Snake’: infrared dark cloud G11.11−0.12 (2014, background): “The cold dust in IRDCs transitions to emission at longer wavelengths, from far-infrared to sub-millimeter and millimeter wavelengths (Molinari et al. 2010; Schuller et al. 2009; Rosolowsky et al. 2010; Aguirre et al. 2011).”
FOREST Unbiased Galactic plane Imaging survey with the Nobeyama 45-m telescope (FUGIN) I: Project Overview and Initial Results (2017, methodology): “Submillimeter continuum surveys of the Galactic plane were also conducted by some groups (the ATLASGAL survey: Schuller et al. 2009; BGPS: Aguirre et al. 2011; and the JCMT Plane Survey (JPS): Moore et al. 2015).”