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Published November 1, 2018 | Published + Submitted
Journal Article Open

The C-Band All-Sky Survey (C-BASS): design and capabilities

Abstract

The C-Band All-Sky Survey (C-BASS) is an all-sky full-polarization survey at a frequency of 5 GHz, designed to provide complementary data to the all-sky surveys of WMAP and Planck, and future CMB B-mode polarization imaging surveys. The observing frequency has been chosen to provide a signal that is dominated by Galactic synchrotron emission, but suffers little from Faraday rotation, so that the measured polarization directions provide a good template for higher frequency observations, and carry direct information about the Galactic magnetic field. Telescopes in both northern and southern hemispheres with matched optical performance are used to provide all-sky coverage from a ground-based experiment. A continuous-comparison radiometer and a correlation polarimeter on each telescope provide stable imaging properties such that all angular scales from the instrument resolution of 45 arcmin up to full sky are accurately measured. The northern instrument has completed its survey and the southern instrument has started observing. We expect that C-BASS data will significantly improve the component separation analysis of Planck and other CMB data, and will provide important constraints on the properties of anomalous Galactic dust and the Galactic magnetic field.

Additional Information

© 2018 The Author(s) Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model). Accepted 2018 July 19. Received 2018 July 17; in original form 2018 May 11. Published: 25 July 2018. The C-BASS project is a collaboration between Oxford and Manchester Universities in the U.K., the California Institute of Technology in the U.S., Rhodes University, UKZN and the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory in South Africa, and the King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) in Saudi Arabia. The work at Oxford was supported by funding from STFC, the Royal Society and the University of Oxford. The work at the California Institute of Technology and Owens Valley Radio Observatory was supported by National Science Foundation (NSF) awards AST-0607857, AST-1010024, AST-1212217, and AST-1616227, and by NASA award NNX15AF06G. The work at Manchester was supported by STFC and CD also acknowledges support from an ERC Starting (Consolidator) Grant (no. 307209). OGK acknowledges the support of a Dorothy Hodgkin Award in funding his studies while a student at Oxford, and the support of a W.M. Keck Institute for Space Studies Postdoctoral Fellowship at Caltech. CJC acknowledges the support of a Commonwealth Scholarship in funding his studies while a student at Oxford. MP acknowledges funding from a FAPESP Young Investigator fellowship, grants 2015/19936-1 and 2016/19425-0, São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP). HMH acknowledges the financial assistance of the South African SKA Project (SKA SA) (http://www.ska.ac.za) towards this research. We also thank Hans Kristian Eriksen and Ingunn Wehus for their assistance with producing Fig. 1. Finally, we thank the late Profs. Richard J. Davis and Rodney D. Davies, who were strong supporters of the C-BASS project from the beginning. http://cbass.web.ox.ac.uk.

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August 22, 2023
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