Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics – Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2011-11-24
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
8 pages, 1 table, 4 figures. Accepted for publication in PASA special issue on Source Finding & Visualisation
Scientific paper
The {\bf H}$_2${\bf O} Southern Galactic {\bf P}lane {\bf S}urvey (HOPS) has observed 100 square degrees of the Galactic plane, using the Mopra radio telescope to search for emission from multiple spectral lines in the 12\,mm band (19.5\,--\,27.5\,GHz). Perhaps the most important of these spectral lines is the 22.2\,GHz water maser transition. We describe the methods used to identify water maser candidates and subsequent confirmation of the sources. Our methods involve a simple determination of likely candidates by searching peak emission maps, utilising the intrinsic nature of water maser emission - spatially unresolved and spectrally narrow-lined. We estimate completeness limits and compare our method with results from the {\sc Duchamp} source finder. We find that the two methods perform similarly. We conclude that the similarity in performance is due to the intrinsic limitation of the noise characteristics of the data. The advantages of our method are that it is slightly more efficient in eliminating spurious detections and is simple to implement. The disadvantage is that it is a manual method of finding sources and so is not practical on datasets much larger than HOPS, or for datasets with extended emission that needs to be characterised. We outline a two-stage method for the most efficient means of finding masers, using {\sc Duchamp}.
Jordan Christopher H.
Longmore Steven
Lowe Vicki
Purcell Cormac
Walsh Andrew J.
No associations
LandOfFree
Maser Source Finding Methods in HOPS does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.
If you have personal experience with Maser Source Finding Methods in HOPS, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Maser Source Finding Methods in HOPS will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-156476