The Parkes-MIT-NRAO (PMN) Surveys

Introduction

Observations for the Parkes-MIT-NRAO (PMN) radio continuum surveys were conducted in June and November 1990. The Parkes 64m radio telescope and the NRAO seven-beam receiver were used to survey the southern sky at a frequency of 4850MHz between declinations of -87° and +10°, and all right ascensions. The survey was divided into four declination bands.

The Point Source Catalogues

A catalogue of sources for each of the PMN Surveys has been produced. The flux limit varies for each of the survey zones, but is typically around 30mJy. The positional accuracy is close to 10 arcsec in each coordinate. The catalogues are available from the ATNF anonymous FTP server in either "plain-text" format or as dBase-compatible database files. See the README file for further information.

Maps from the PMN Surveys

FITS maps have been produced from the PMN Southern, Zenith, Tropical and Equatorial Survey data using the Astronomical Image Processing System (AIPS). The maps were produced on a SIN (orthographic) projection centred on each field. Each is 1024 x 1024 pixels in size with 1 arcmin spacing, thus approximately 17° on a side. The beam FWHM is 5 arcmin.

There are 96 maps for the Southern Survey centred on δ = -80°, -65°, -50°, and -35°; 24 maps for the Zenith Survey centred on δ = -33°; 48 for the Tropical Survey centred on δ = -25°, and -10°; and 48 for the Equatorial Survey centred on δ = -05°, and +10° (total 216). The file names indicate the J2000 equatorial coordinates of the centre of the survey field. Refer to the README file for further information.

Maps from the 87GB survey (Condon, J. J., Broderick, J. J., Seielstad, G. A., Douglas, K., & Gregory, P. C. 1994, AJ, 107, 1829), the northern hemisphere counterpart of PMN, are also available.

An all-sky map has been constructed by combining maps from the PMN and 87GB surveys. The map is 10801 × 5401 pixels in extent with 2 arcmin pixel spacing on a plate carrée projection (188 MiB). The 87GB maps were smoothed lightly to match the FWHM beamwidth of the PMN maps in the overlap region between the celestial equator and declination +10°. The FWHM beamwidth for the map as a whole is close to 5.0 arcmin, varying slightly between declination zones.

Abstracts from PMN Survey Publications

Acknowledgments

The reduction and analysis of the PMN Survey data was largely the work of Mark Griffith and Alan Wright. The FITS maps of the PMN Survey were produced by Jim Condon (NRAO) and Niven Tasker.