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The ISOPHOT far-infrared serendipity sky survey

Manfred Stickel , D. Lemke , U. Klaas , L.V. Toth , et al. (on behalf of the ISOPHOT CISS Consortium MPIA, ESA, AIP, ICSTM, IPAC)

Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie Koenigstuhl 17 D-69117 Heidelberg, Germany




The ISOPHOT Serendipity Survey utilized the otherwise unused slew time between ISO's pointed observations with strip scanning measurements of the sky in the far-infrared at 170 $\rm\mu m$. During ISO's lifetime, more than 12000 slew measurements totalling nearly 550 hours of observing time were collected with ISOPHOT's $2\times2$ pixel C200 array. The total slew length exceeds 150000 degrees, leading to an incomplete sky survey with a coverage of $\rm\sim 15\%$.

The slews contain information about two fundamentally different types of objects, namely unresolved extragalactic sources as well as extended regions of galactic molecular clouds and cirrus emission. Initial emphasis in the software development has been put on the detection of point sources and the extraction of astrophysically interesting parameters such as 170 $\rm\mu m$ fluxes from the crossed sources.

During the ISO mission, an initial study of detected point sources in a 100 square degree high galactic latitude field near the North Galactic Pole crossed by $\sim$350 slews (``Minisurvey'') indicated that detection completeness with respect to previously known IRAS sources will be almost 100% for sources with 100 $\rm\mu m$flux greater than 2 Jy. It drops below $\rm\sim 50\%$ for 100 $\rm\mu m$ fluxes below 1.5 Jy with a detection limit for the faintest sources of $\rm\sim 1 Jy$ at 170 $\rm\mu m$. At present the bulk processing of the whole Serendipity database is underway. Since the vast majority of the sources were found to be galaxies, it is anticipated that a final Serendipity Survey catalogue will result in a large catalogue of $\sim$2000 galaxies, where almost all have not been previously observed at 170 $\rm\mu m$. Dedicated calibration observations have been carried out during the ISO mission to tie the derived Serendipity fluxes to an absolute photometric level. For most of the sources lying closer than 1 arc-minute to the slews, a photometric accuracy of $\rm\sim 30 \%$ is expected.

The investigation of the galactic FIR emission has been started with a search for cold spots in star forming regions and the analysis of the 170 to 100 $\rm\mu m$ flux ratio as a temperature indicator. Already known compact CO sources in Chameleon and Ophiucus are used for calibration purposes. First results from this study will be presented.


next up previous contents index
Next: The far-infrared spectral energy Up: ORAL TALKS (by order Previous: ISO observations of the
"The Universe as seen by ISO", 20 - 23 October 1998, Paris: Abstract Book