THE ATACAMA COSMOLOGY TELESCOPE: DATA CHARACTERIZATION AND MAPMAKING

We present a description of the data reduction and mapmaking pipeline used for the 2008 observing season of the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT). The data presented here at 148 GHz represent 12% of the 90 TB collected by ACT from 2007 to 2010. In 2008 we observed for 136 days, producing a total of...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Astrophysical journal 2013-01, Vol.762 (1), p.1-19
Main Authors: Dunner, Rolando, HASSELFIELD, MATTHEW, Marriage, Tobias A, Sievers, Jon, Acquaviva, Viviana, Addison, Graeme E, Ade, Peter A R, Aguirre, Paula, Amiri, Mandana, Appel, John William
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
ANISOTROPY
ASTRONOMY
ASTROPHYSICS
ASTROPHYSICS, COSMOLOGY AND ASTRONOMY
Atmospherics
BRIGHTNESS
CALIBRATION
COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION
CORRELATIONS
COSMOLOGY
Data reduction
Detectors
EFFICIENCY
FLUCTUATIONS
GHZ RANGE
LEAST SQUARE FIT
Mapmaking
MULTIPOLES
NOISE
RELICT RADIATION
SENSITIVITY
TELESCOPES
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Summary:We present a description of the data reduction and mapmaking pipeline used for the 2008 observing season of the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT). The data presented here at 148 GHz represent 12% of the 90 TB collected by ACT from 2007 to 2010. In 2008 we observed for 136 days, producing a total of 1423 hr of data (11 TB for the 148 GHz band only), with a daily average of 10.5 hr of observation. The remaining 163 hr correspond to calibration runs. Atmospheric brightness fluctuations constitute the main contaminant in the data and dominate the detector noise covariance at low frequencies in the TOD. The maps were made by solving the least-squares problem using the Preconditioned Conjugate Gradient method, incorporating the details of the detector and noise correlations. Simulations, as well as cross-correlations with Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe sky maps on large angular scales, reveal that our maps are unbiased at multipoles l > 300. This paper accompanies the public release of the 148 GHz southern stripe maps from 2008. The techniques described here will be applied to future maps and data releases.
ISSN:0004-637X
1538-4357
DOI:10.1088/0004-637X/762/1/10