The Rapid ASKAP Continuum Survey initial data release

ASKAP has conducted its first survey of the entire southern sky in record speed and detail, creating a new atlas of the Universe. The Rapid ASKAP Continuum Survey, or RACS, has detected about 3 million distant radio galaxies, about a million of which have never been seen before.

The initial results are published today in the Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia.

More than a 3rd of the 903 RACS fields have been deposited into CASDA and are publicly available to the astronomical community. Work is ongoing to deposit the remaining fields.

To access the data, search for project AS110 in the UI or VO TAP query. Or use these collection links for images and visibilities, and catalogues. (Click on the files tab).

More information on the Rapid ASKAP Continuum Survey (RACS) can be found here.

FAQ

Q. How do I do a cone search against the RACS catalogues?

A. The UI cone search will return the catalogue containing that position. To do a cone search for individual RACS catalogue radio sources use the following TAP ADQL query:

SELECT * FROM casda.continuum_component where 1=CONTAINS(POINT(‘ICRS’, ra_deg_cont, dec_deg_cont),CIRCLE(‘ICRS’,183.475,11.236,0.01)) and project_id = 23

The above example is for RA = 183.475, Dec = 11.236 and search radius of 0.01 deg, returns one RACS radio component.

This can be done e.g. in TOPCAT, or in python with the following code using astroquery TAP module:

 

from astroquery.utils.tap.core import TapPlus

casdatap = TapPlus(url=”https://casda.csiro.au/casda_vo_tools/tap”)

job = casdatap.launch_job_async(“SELECT * FROM casda.continuum_component where 1=CONTAINS(POINT(‘ICRS’, ra_deg_cont, dec_deg_cont),CIRCLE(‘ICRS’,183.475,11.236,0.01)) and project_id = 23”)

r = job.get_results()