Max Tegmark's library: cleaning

Figure: The filter for finding point sources is plotted in real space (left) and Fourier space (right)

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Removing point sources from CMB maps

Authors

Max Tegmark & Angelica de Oliveira-Costa

Abstract:

For high-precision cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments, contamination from extragalactic point sources is a major concern. It is therefore useful to be able to detect and discard point source contaminated pixels using the map itself. We show that the sensitivity with which this can be done can often be greatly improved (by factors between 2.5 and 18 for the upcoming Planck mission) by a customized hi-pass filtering that suppresses fluctuations due to CMB and diffuse galactic foregrounds. This means that point source contamination will not severely degrade the cleanest Planck channels unless current source count estimates are off by more than an order of magnitude. A catalog of around 40,000 far infra-red sources at 857 GHz may be a useful by-product of Planck.

Reference info:

ApJ Lett., 500, L83-L86 (1998)

Online references:

This site also contains the latest (non-astro/ph) versions of some papers that are referenced in the text; de Oliveira-Costa et al 1997, Tegmark & Efstathiou 1996 (TE96), Tegmark & Villumsen 1997, Tegmark 1998.

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This page was last modified July 16, 1998.
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