Data

It is envisaged that RACS will observe the entire sky over multiple epochs and in multiple bands. The final data products are obtained by convolving to a common resolution, mosaicking neighbouring tiles and performing source-finding on the resulting images. In situations where a tile has been observed multiple times during an epoch the tile with the best characteristics (highest sensitivity, better resolution and lowest residual artefacts) will be used. As these final data products have been carefully checked for consistency and product improved uniformity in sensitivity we recommend that these be used for general science. For each epoch/band, the following data products will be made available:

  • Tile images with neighbouring fields mosaicked along the tile edge.
  • An all-sky HiPS image.
  • An all-sky source and component catalogue.

The first such data release is for the first epoch of a RACS-low observation, see RACS-low DR1 for more details on this release and how to access these data products.

Additionally, the raw data products for each tile will also be made available. These are not ideal for general all-sky science as they have reduced sensitivity towards the edge of the tile, may not always have suitable resolution and some may have increased levels of artefacts (in the case of tiles with multiple observations). However, there are instances where access to the original tile data is useful e.g. they provide higher resolution for any individual tile (as they are not convolved to a common resolution with respect to neighbouring tiles), they allow searching for source variability in tile overlap regions and/or in re-observations, they allow for re-processing of visibilities and/or combining visibilities/images from multiple tile observations. For each tile observation we expect to produce the following raw data products:

  • An image for each field/tile (these images will have reduced sensitivity towards the edge of the tile).
  • A source and component list for each individual field/tile image.
  • Visibility data for each beam of each field/tile.

For more details on how to access to these raw data products for RACS-low DR1 see RACS-low DR1 raw data