The systematic spectral analysis of radio surveys

TL;DR

This paper introduces a software module designed to automatically analyze and select radio sources based on their spectra, facilitating efficient handling of large survey data from current and future radio telescopes.

Contribution

It presents the surveys module for BRATS, enabling automated spectral analysis and source selection in large radio survey datasets.

Findings

Demonstrated application to multi-scale radio sources

Showed integration of new and existing data for analysis

Outlined pathway for large survey data processing

Abstract

Current and future continuum surveys being undertaken by the new generation of radio telescopes are now poised to address many important science questions, ranging from the earliest galaxies, to the physics of nearby AGN, as well as potentially providing new and unexpected discoveries. However, how to efficiently analyse the large quantities of data collected by these studies in order to maximise their scientific output remains an open question. In these proceedings we present details of the surveys module for the Broadband Radio Astronomy Tools (BRATS) software package which will combine new observations with existing multi-frequency data in order to automatically analyse and select sources based on their spectrum. We show how these methods can been applied to investigate objects observed on a variety of spatial scales, and suggest a pathway for how this can be used in the wider context of surveys and large samples.