LOW-FREQUENCY OBSERVATIONS of LINEARLY POLARIZED STRUCTURES in the INTERSTELLAR MEDIUM NEAR the SOUTH GALACTIC POLE

E Lenc; BM Gaensler; XH Sun; EM Sadler; AG Willis; N Barry; AP Beardsley; ME Bell; G Bernardi; JD Bowman; F Briggs; JR Callingham; RJ Cappallo; P Carroll; BE Corey; AD Oliveira-Costa; AA Deshpande; JS Dillon; KS Dwarkanath; D Emrich; A Ewall-Wice; L Feng; BQ For; R Goeke; LJ Greenhill; P Hancock; BJ Hazelton; JN Hewitt; L Hindson; N Hurley-Walker; M Johnston-Hollitt; DC Jacobs; AD Kapińska; DL Kaplan; JC Kasper; HS Kim; E Kratzenberg; J Line; A Loeb; CJ Lonsdale; MJ Lynch; B McKinley; SR McWhirter; DA Mitchell; MF Morales; E Morgan; J Morgan; T Murphy; AR Neben; D Oberoi; AR Offringa; SM Ord; S Paul; B Pindor; JC Pober; T Prabu; P Procopio; J Riding; AEE Rogers; A Roshi; NU Shankar; SK Sethi; KS Srivani; L Staveley-Smith; R Subrahmanyan; IS Sullivan; M Tegmark; N Thyagarajan; SJ Tingay; C Trott; M Waterson; RB Wayth; RL Webster; AR Whitney; A Williams; CL Williams; C Wu; JSB Wyithe; Q Zheng

Journal article

LOW-FREQUENCY OBSERVATIONS of LINEARLY POLARIZED STRUCTURES in the INTERSTELLAR MEDIUM NEAR the SOUTH GALACTIC POLE

E Lenc, BM Gaensler, XH Sun, EM Sadler, AG Willis, N Barry, AP Beardsley, ME Bell, G Bernardi, JD Bowman, F Briggs, JR Callingham, RJ Cappallo, P Carroll, BE Corey, AD Oliveira-Costa, AA Deshpande, JS Dillon, KS Dwarkanath, D Emrich Show all

Astrophysical Journal | IOP PUBLISHING LTD | Published : 2016

DOI: 10.3847/0004-637X/830/1/38

Abstract

We present deep polarimetric observations at 154 MHz with the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA), covering 625 deg2 centered on α = 0hand δ = -27°. The sensitivity available in our deep observations allows an in-band, frequency-dependent analysis of polarized structure for the first time at long wavelengths. Our analysis suggests that the polarized structures are dominated by intrinsic emission but may also have a foreground Faraday screen component. At these wavelengths, the compactness of the MWA baseline distribution provides excellent snapshot sensitivity to large-scale structure. The observations are sensitive to diffuse polarized emission at ∼54′ resolution with a sensitivity of 5.9 mJy b..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

Nichole Barry Author

Pietro Procopio Author

Rachel Webster Author

Stuart Wyithe Author

Grants

Awarded by National Science Foundation

Funding Acknowledgements

This research was conducted by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics (CAASTRO), through project number CE110001020. D.C.J. is supported by the US National Science Foundation under grant number 1401708. This scientific work makes use of the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory, operated by CSIRO. We acknowledge the Wajarri Yamatji people as the traditional owners of the Observatory site. Support for the operation of the MWA is provided by the Australian Government (NCRIS), under a contract to Curtin University administered by Astronomy Australia Limited. We acknowledge the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre which is supported by the Western Australian and Australian Governments. The Dunlap Institute is funded through an endowment established by the David Dunlap family and the University of Toronto. We are also grateful to the anonymous referee for useful comments on the original version of this paper.