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Published January 2009 | Published
Journal Article Open

MIPSGAL: A Survey of the Inner Galactic Plane at 24 and 70 μm

Abstract

MIPSGAL is a 278 deg^2 survey of the inner Galactic plane using the Multiband Infrared Photometer for Spitzer aboard the Spitzer Space Telescope. The survey field was imaged in two passbands, 24 and 70 μm with resolutions of 6″ and 18″, respectively. The survey was designed to provide a uniform, well-calibrated and well-characterized data set for general inquiry of the inner Galactic plane and as a longer-wavelength complement to the shorter-wavelength Spitzer survey of the Galactic plane: Galactic Plane Infrared Mapping Survey Extraordinaire. The primary science drivers of the current survey are to identify all high-mass (M > 5 M⊙) protostars in the inner Galactic disk and to probe the distribution, energetics, and properties of interstellar dust in the Galactic disk. The observations were planned to minimize data artifacts due to image latents at 24 μm and to provide full coverage at 70 μm. Observations at ecliptic latitudes within 15° of the ecliptic plane were taken at multiple epochs to help reject asteroids. The data for the survey were collected in three epochs, 2005 September–October, 2006 April, and 2006 October with all of the data available to the public. The estimated point-source sensitivities of the survey are 2 and 75 mJy (3 σ) at 24 and 70 μm, respectively. Additional data processing was needed to mitigate image artifacts due to bright sources at 24 μm and detector responsivity variations at 70 μm due to the large dynamic range of the Galactic plane. Enhanced data products including artifact-mitigated mosaics and point-source catalogs are being produced with the 24 μm mosaics already publicly available from the NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive. Some preliminary results using the enhanced data products are described.

Additional Information

© 2009 The Astronomical Society of the Pacific. Received 2008 September 29; accepted 2008 November 26; published 2009 January 4. This work is based on observations made with the Spitzer Space Telescope, which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with NASA. Support for this work was provided by NASA through an award issued by JPL/Caltech. S. J. C. acknowledges support from a NASA Long Term Space Astrophysics grant. We thank the anonymous referee for helpful comments. This research made use of data products from the Midcourse Space Experiment. Processing of the MSX data was funded by the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization with additional support from NASA Office of Space Science. This publication makes use of data products from the Two Micron All Sky Survey, which is a joint project of the University of Massachusetts and the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center/Caltech, funded by NASA and the National Science Foundation. This research has also made use of the NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive, which is operated by the JPL/Caltech, under contract with NASA, NASA's Astrophysics Data System and the VizieR Catalogue access tool, CDS, Strasbourg, France. This research made use of Montage, funded by the NASA's Earth Science Technology Office, Computation Technologies Project, under Cooperative Agreement Number NCC5-626 between NASA and the California Institute of Technology. Montage is maintained by the NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive.

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Created:
August 20, 2023
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October 18, 2023