Molonglo Galactic Plane Survey
MGPS Home Page

Latest News

At present we are building this web site, so the appearance and contents may change. A paper describing MGPS1 has been submitted to the Astrophysical Journal Supplement.

What?

The first epoch Molonglo Galactic Plane Survey (MGPS-1) is a radio continuum survey made using the Molonglo Observatory Synthesis Telescope (MOST) at 843 MHz with a resolution of 43'' x 43'' cosec |dec|. The region surveyed is 245 < L < 355, |b| < 1.5 degrees. The root-mean-square sensitivity over much of the mosaiced survey is 1-2 mJy/beam (1 sigma), and the positional accuracy is 1-2''. The dynamic range is no better than 250:1, and this also constrains the sensitivity in some parts of the images. The survey area of 330 sq deg contains well over 12,000 unresolved or barely resolved objects, almost all of which are extra-galactic sources lying in the Zone of Avoidance. In addition a significant fraction of this area is covered by extended, diffuse emission associated with thermal complexes, discrete H II regions, supernova remnants, and other structures in the Galactic interstellar medium.

How?

A full description of the survey is contained in:

• ``The Molonglo Galactic Plane Survey'' (Gzipped Postscript, no grayscales, 70Kb)
  
• ``The Molonglo Galactic Plane Survey: Table 2'' (Gzipped Postscript, 17Kb)
  
• Gzipp'ed postscript images of the greyscales (each is 1.2 Mb)
  Fig4(a+b)| Fig4(c+d)| Fig4(e+f)| Fig4(g+h)| Fig4(i+j)| Fig4(k+l)| Fig4(m)

Where?

The Molonglo Observatory Synthesis Telescope (MOST) is located near Canberra, Australia, and is operated by the University of Sydney.

Data products

Two forms of MGPS data product are available: (1) 3 x 3 degree mosaics in the form of FITS files, and (2) Original images in FITS format. The quality of the mosaics is improved owing to the superposition of several component images and they are to be preferred for object searches and display purposes. However, the beam shape in the mosaics is not properly defined, and the original images should be used for most quantitative studies.

You can download the mosaics using the following table (the FITS mosaics are about 1.2 Mb each). You might need to use the SHIFT key in your browser to download the file to your disk. You can access the original images in gzip'ed FITS format (about 400 Kb each) at our ORIGINALSsite. Consult the AAA-README file in this area for further information. Most of these images have a diameter of 70'.