The LOFAR Two-metre Sky Survey. I. Survey description and preliminary data release

By T. Shimwell, H. Röttgering, P. Best, W. Williams, T. J. Dijkema, F. Gasperin, M. Hardcastle, G. Heald, D. Hoang, A. Horneffer and 62 more. 2016

414 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The LOFAR Two-metre Sky Survey (LoTSS) is a deep 120-168 MHz imaging survey that will eventually cover the entire northern sky. Each of the 3170 pointings will be observed for 8 h, which, at most declinations, is sufficient to produce ~5? resolution images with a sensitivity of ~100 ?Jy/beam and accomplish the main scientific aims of the survey, which are to explore the formation and evolution of massive black holes, galaxies, clusters of galaxies and large-scale structure. Owing to the compact core and long baselines of LOFAR, the images provide excellent sensitivity to both highly extended and compact emission. For legacy value, the data are archived at high spectral and time resolution to facilitate subarcsecond imaging and spectral line studies. In this paper we provide an overview of the LoTSS. We outline the survey strategy, the observational status, the current calibration techniques, a preliminary data release, and the anticipated scientific impact. The preliminary images that we have released were created using a fully automated but direction-independent calibration strategy and are significantly more sensitive than those produced by any existing large-Area low-frequency survey. In excess of 44 000 sources are detected in the images that have a resolution of 25?, typical noise levels of less than 0.5 mJy/beam, and cover an area of over 350 square degrees in the region of the HETDEX Spring Field (right ascension 10h45m00s to 15h30m00s and declination 45°00?00? to 57°00?00?).

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/58560a43ebf75d8ba7fdc145c670bc3a260c4589

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

Citations in the corpus

Diffuse Radio Emission from Galaxy Clusters (2019, background): “More recently, halos have been uncovered with targeted GMRT campaigns5 (Venturi et al. 2008, 2007; Kale et al. 2013, 2015; Knowles et al. 2018), and via low-frequency surveys such as GLEAM6 (Wayth et al. 2015; Hurley-Walker et al. 2017) and LoTSS7 (Shimwell et al. 2017, 2018).”
The Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array Sky Survey (VLASS). Science Case and Survey Design (2019, background): “VLASS additionally sets the stage for future radio surveys and facilities, such as surveys using MeerKAT (Jonas & MeerKAT Team (2016) [in particular the MeerKAT International GHz Tiered Extragalactic Exploration Survey (MIGHTEE) and MeerKAT Large Area Sky Survey (MeerKLASS) (Jarvis et al. 2016; Sant”