The Rapid ASKAP Continuum Survey I: Design and First Results

TL;DR

The Rapid ASKAP Continuum Survey (RACS) is a large-scale, shallow radio sky survey using the ASKAP telescope, providing high-resolution images and catalogs that surpass previous surveys in depth and coverage, aiding future astronomical research.

Contribution

This paper introduces the RACS survey design, first data release, and demonstrates its capabilities with extensive sky coverage and improved resolution over existing surveys.

Findings

Coverage of the southern sky south of +41° declination

First data release includes 903 images and catalogs

Survey images are deeper and have better resolution than NVSS and SUMSS

Abstract

The Rapid ASKAP Continuum Survey (RACS) is the first large-area survey to be conducted with the full 36-antenna Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) telescope. RACS will provide a shallow model of the ASKAP sky that will aid the calibration of future deep ASKAP surveys. RACS will cover the whole sky visible from the ASKAP site in Western Australia, and will cover the full ASKAP band of $700-1800$ MHz. The RACS images are generally deeper than the existing NRAO VLA Sky Survey (NVSS) and Sydney University Molonglo Sky Survey (SUMSS) radio surveys and have better spatial resolution. All RACS survey products will be public, including radio images (with $\sim 15$ arcsecond resolution) and catalogues of about three million source components with spectral index and polarisation information. In this paper, we present a description of the RACS survey and the first data release of 903 images covering the sky south of declination $+41^\circ$ made over a 288 MHz band centred at 887.5 MHz.