ALFALFA: an Exploration of the z=0 HI Universe

TL;DR

The ALFALFA survey uses the Arecibo telescope to map HI in the local universe, significantly improving sensitivity and resolution over previous surveys, and aims to catalog thousands of HI-bearing objects.

Contribution

This paper presents the design, scope, and preliminary results of the ALFALFA survey, highlighting its advancements over prior HI surveys.

Findings

Survey covers 44% of planned area as of 2007

ALFALFA detects six times more sources than HIPASS

Preliminary results focus on Virgo cluster

Abstract

The Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA (ALFALFA) Survey is a program aimed at obtaining a census of HI-bearing objects over a cosmologically significant volume of the local Universe. It will cover 7074 square degrees of the high latitude sky accessible with the Arecibo 305m telescope, using the 7-beam feed L-band feed array (ALFA). Started in February 2005, as of Summer of 2007 survey observations are 44\% complete. ALFALFA offers an improvement of about one order of magnitude in sensitivity, 4 times the angular resolution, 3 times the spectral resolution, and 1.6 times the total bandwidth of HIPASS. Although it will cover only one quarter the sky solid angle surveyed by HIPASS, ALFALFA will detect approximately six times as many sources, with a median depth of 110 Mpc. Preliminary results of ALFALFA are presented, with emphasis on those related with the Virgo cluster.