The Bolocam Galactic Plane Survey -- II. Catalog of the Image Data

Details The Bolocam Galactic Plane Survey -- II. Catalog of the Image Data The Bolocam Galactic Plane Survey -- II. Catalog of the Image Data

2009-09-15

arxiv.org/abs/0909.2871v2

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

Galaxy Astrophysics

Accepted by ApJS. Data release and full resolution manuscript at http://irsa.ipac.caltech.edu/data/BOLOCAM_GPS/

Scientific paper

We present a catalog of 8358 sources extracted from images produced by the Bolocam Galactic Plane Survey (BGPS). The BGPS is a survey of the millimeter dust continuum emission from the northern Galactic plane. The catalog sources are extracted using a custom algorithm, Bolocat, which was designed specifically to identify and characterize objects in the large-area maps generated from the Bolocam instrument. The catalog products are designed to facilitate follow-up observations of these relatively unstudied objects. The catalog is 98% complete from 0.4 Jy to 60 Jy over all object sizes for which the survey is sensitive (<3.5'). We find that the sources extracted can best be described as molecular clumps -- large dense regions in molecular clouds linked to cluster formation. We find the flux density distribution of sources follows a power law with dN/dS ~S^(-2.4 +/- 0.1) and that the mean Galactic latitude for sources is significantly below the midplane: =(-0.095 +/- 0.001) deg.