The Boston University-Five College Radio Astronomy Observatory Galactic Ring Survey

TL;DR

The Galactic Ring Survey provides a comprehensive, high-resolution map of 13CO emission in the Milky Way's inner regions, offering valuable data for understanding galactic structure and molecular clouds.

Contribution

This survey is the first to map 13CO emission over a large, contiguous region with high angular and velocity resolution, producing a publicly available, detailed dataset for galactic studies.

Findings

Mapped 75.4 square degrees of the Galactic plane

Produced nearly 2 million spectra with high sensitivity

Generated detailed images and data products for community use

Abstract

The Boston University-Five College Radio Astronomy Observatory Galactic Ring Survey is a new survey of Galactic 13CO (1-0) emission. The survey used the SEQUOIA multi pixel array on the Five College Radio Astronomy Observatory 14 m telescope to cover a longitude range of l = 18 deg-55.7 deg and a latitude range of |b| < 1 deg, a total of 75.4 square degrees. Using both position-switching and On-The-Fly mapping modes, we achieved an angular sampling of 22 arcsec, better than half of the telescope's 46 arcsec angular resolution. The survey's velocity coverage is -5 to 135 km/s for Galactic longitudes l <= 40 deg and -5 to 85 km/s for Galactic longitudes l > 40 deg. At the velocity resolution of 0.21 km/s, the typical rms sensitivity is sigma(TA*)~0.13 K. The survey comprises a total of 1,993,522 spectra. We show integrated intensity images (zeroth moment maps), channel maps, position-velocity diagrams, and an average spectrum of the completed survey dataset. We also discuss the telescope and instrumental parameters, the observing modes, the data reduction processes, and the emission and noise characteristics of the dataset. The Galactic Ring Survey data are available to the community at www.bu.edu/galacticring or in DVD form by request.