BLAST Observations of the South Ecliptic Pole field: Number Counts and Source Catalogs

TL;DR

This paper reports on a submillimeter survey of the South Ecliptic Pole using BLAST, providing new galaxy counts, source catalogs, and insights into bright submillimeter sources, with results consistent with previous measurements.

Contribution

It presents the first large-area submillimeter survey at multiple wavelengths near the South Ecliptic Pole, with new source catalogs and improved constraints on galaxy counts.

Findings

Detected 132, 89, and 61 sources at 250, 350, and 500 μm with S/N>4.

Provided a combined catalog of 232 sources with >4σ significance.

Results agree with previous Herschel/SPIRE measurements and improve bright-end galaxy count constraints.

Abstract

We present results from a survey carried out by the Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope (BLAST) on a 9 deg^2 field near the South Ecliptic Pole at 250, 350 and 500 {\mu}m. The median 1{\sigma} depths of the maps are 36.0, 26.4 and 18.4 mJy, respectively. We apply a statistical method to estimate submillimeter galaxy number counts and find that they are in agreement with other measurements made with the same instrument and with the more recent results from Herschel/SPIRE. Thanks to the large field observed, the new measurements give additional constraints on the bright end of the counts. We identify 132, 89 and 61 sources with S/N>4 at 250, 350, 500 {\mu}m, respectively and provide a multi-wavelength combined catalog of 232 sources with a significance >4{\sigma} in at least one BLAST band. The new BLAST maps and catalogs are available publicly at http://blastexperiment.info.