VLBA Calibrator Survey 2 (VCS2)

Very Long Baseline Array Calibrator Survey 2 called VCS2, containing 276 radio sources is an extension of the VCS1 catalogue. This survey fills in regions of the sky that were not completely covered by the previous VCS1 calibrator survey. The VCS2 survey includes calibrator sources near the Galactic plane, -30 deg < -45 deg, and VLA calibrators. The positions have been derived from astrometric analysis of the group delays measured at 2.3 and 8.4 GHz using the Goddard Space Flight Center Calc/Solve package. From the VLBA snapshot observations, images of the calibrators are available, and each source is given a quality code for anticipated use.

Publication: E. Fomalont, L. Petrov, D.S. McMillan, D. Gordon, C. Ma, "The second VLBA Calibrator Survey - VCS2", Astronomical Journal, vol. 126 (N5), p. 2562-2566, 2003. Full text   (PS + gzip, 335Kb )    PDF-file.

Observations

There were two observing sessions, each 24 hour long: VCS2a, and VCS2b:
VCS2a was observed from 2002.01.31_18:00 till 2002.02.01_17:50
VCS2b was observed from 2002.05.14_16:00 till 2002.05.15_15:54

Date Experiment Session URL for downloading Size (bytes)
2002.01.31 bf071a $02JAN31XV ftp://cddis1.gsfc.nasa.gov/vlbi/raw/fits/2002_01_31_bf071a_fits.tar.bz2 1,056,297,485
2002.05.14 bf071b $02MAY14XV ftp://cddis1.gsfc.nasa.gov:21/vlbi/raw/fits/2002_05_14_bf071b_fits.tar.bz2 1,033,207,537

Results

  1. VCS2 catalogue in HTML form. The catalogue contains source positions, their uncertainties, estimates of the total VLBA flux density, the VLBA flux density of unresolved components, naturally weighted CLEAN images in postscript and in fits format at X and S-band; plots of the correlated flux density as a function of the length of the baseline projection to the source plane; fits files with calibrated uv data.

  2. VCS2 catalogue in ASCII format. The catalogue contains source positions, their uncertainties, total VLBA flux density, the VLBA flux density of unresolved components.

  3. Catalogue in HTML form of 38 sources used as tropospheric calibrators. The catalogue contains source positions, their uncertainties, estimates of the total VLBA flux density, the VLBA flux density of unresolved components, naturally weighted CLEAN images in postscript and in fits format at X and S-band; plots of the correlated flux density as a function of the length of the baseline projection to the source plane; fits files with calibrated uv data.

  4. Catalogue in ASCII format of 38 sources used as tropospheric calibrators.

  5. All images and uv data in one tar.bz2 file (180Mb). Refer to the readme file for the file name convention in this archive.

276 new sources were detected. 185 of them are suitable as calibrators. (more than 8 X/S good observations, semi-major error ellipse is less than 25 nrad (5 mas)).

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Last update: 13-DEC-2004 17:36:28
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