The Planck Catalogue of Compact Sources

TL;DR

The Planck Catalogue of Compact Sources (PCCS) provides a comprehensive, high-sensitivity all-sky list of Galactic and extragalactic sources detected in microwave frequencies, with improved resolution and reliability over previous surveys.

Contribution

This paper introduces the PCCS, a new all-sky catalogue of compact sources detected by Planck, with enhanced sensitivity, resolution, and reliability compared to prior surveys.

Findings

Catalogue covers 30-857 GHz frequencies.

Achieves 90% completeness at 180 mJy.

Contains sources associated with diverse astrophysical objects.

Abstract

The Planck Catalogue of Compact Sources (PCCS) is the catalogue of sources detected in the first 15 months of Planck operations, the nominal mission. It consists of nine single-frequency catalogues of compact sources, both Galactic and extragalactic, detected over the entire sky. The PCCS covers the frequency range 30 -- 857 GHz with higher sensitivity and better angular resolution than previous all-sky surveys in the microwave band. It is 90 percent complete at 180 mJy in the best channel, and the resolution ranges from 32.88 to 4.33 arc minutes. By construction its reliability is greater than 80 percent, and more than 65 percent of the sources have been detected at least in two contiguous Planck channels. Many of the Planck PCCS sources can be associated with stars with dust shells, stellar cores, radio galaxies, blazars, infrared luminous galaxies and Galactic interstellar medium features. Here we summarize the construction and validation of the PCCS, its contents and its statistical characterization.