The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Data Characterization and Map Making
Rolando D\"unner, Matthew Hasselfield, Tobias A. Marriage, Jon, Sievers, Viviana Acquaviva, Graeme E. Addison, Peter A. R. Ade, Paula, Aguirre, Mandana Amiri, John William Appel, L. Felipe Barrientos, Elia S., Battistelli, J. Richard Bond, Ben Brown, Bryce Burger

TL;DR
This paper details the data processing, noise analysis, and mapmaking procedures for the 2008 Atacama Cosmology Telescope observations at 148 GHz, resulting in high-quality CMB maps and insights into data quality and systematics.
Contribution
It introduces a comprehensive pipeline for data reduction and mapmaking for ACT, including noise characterization, calibration, and systematic error mitigation, with results validated against WMAP.
Findings
Maps are unbiased at multipoles > 300
Achieved 38% survey efficiency after data selection
Total sensitivity of 32 micro-Kelvin sqrt{s} in the maps
Abstract
We present a description of the data reduction and mapmaking pipeline used for the 2008 observing season of the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT). The data presented here at 148 GHz represent 12% of the 90 TB collected by ACT from 2007 to 2010. In 2008 we observed for 136 days, producing a total of 1423 hours of data (11 TB for the 148 GHz band only), with a daily average of 10.5 hours of observation. From these, 1085 hours were devoted to a 850 deg^2 stripe (11.2 hours by 9.1 deg) centered on a declination of -52.7 deg, while 175 hours were devoted to a 280 deg^2 stripe (4.5 hours by 4.8 deg) centered at the celestial equator. We discuss sources of statistical and systematic noise, calibration, telescope pointing, and data selection. Out of 1260 survey hours and 1024 detectors per array, 816 hours and 593 effective detectors remain after data selection for this frequency band, yielding…
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Taxonomy
TopicsAstronomical Observations and Instrumentation · Astronomy and Astrophysical Research
