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Atacama Cosmology Telescope 2008 Southern Survey 148/218 GHz Source Catalog

Metadata Updated: September 19, 2025

This table contains a catalog of 191 extragalactic sources detected by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) at 148 and/or 218 GHz in the 2008 Southern survey. Flux densities span 14 -1700 mJy, and the authors use source spectral indices derived using ACT-only data to divide their sources into two subpopulations: 167 radio galaxies powered by central active galactic nuclei (AGN) and 24 dusty star-forming galaxies (DSFGs). They cross-identify 97% of their sources (166 of the AGN and 19 of the DSFGs) with those in currently available catalogs. When combined with flux densities from the Australia Telescope 20-GHz survey and follow-up observations with the Australia Telescope Compact Array, the synchrotron-dominated population is seen to exhibit a steepening of the slope of the spectral energy distribution from 20 to 148 GHz, with the trend continuing to 218 GHz. The ACT dust-dominated source population has a median spectral index, alpha<sub>148-218GHz</sub>, of 3.7<sup>+0.62</sup><sub>-0.86</sub>, and includes both local galaxies and sources with redshift around 6. Dusty sources with no counterpart in existing catalogs likely belong to a recently discovered subpopulation of DSFGs lensed by foreground galaxies or galaxy groups. The ACT experiment (Swetz et al., 2011, ApJS, 194, 41) is situated on the slopes of Cerro Toco in the Atacama Desert of Chile at an elevation of 5190m. ACT's latitude gives access to both the northern and southern celestial hemispheres. Observations occurred simultaneously in three frequency bands, at 148 GHz (2.0 mm), 218 GHz (1.4 mm) and 277 GHz (1.1 mm) with angular resolutions of roughly 1.4, 1.0 and 0.9 arcminutes, respectively. The ACT-detected source list contains 169 sources selected at 148 GHz with S/N > 5, spanning two decades in flux density, from 14 to 1700 mJy. The 218 GHz map independently yielded 133 sources with S/N > 5. The combination of these two independent source lists from which the present table was constructed gives a total count of 191 sources, with 110 galaxies detected with S/N > 5 at both frequencies. This table was created by the HEASARC in May 2015 based on <a href="https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/ftp/cats/J/MNRAS/439/1556/">CDS Catalog J/MNRAS/439/1556/</a> file table4.dat. This is a service provided by NASA HEASARC .

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

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Dates

Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date September 19, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from NASA Data.json

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date September 19, 2025
Publisher High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center
Maintainer
Identifier ivo://nasa.heasarc/actssrcat
Data Last Modified 2025-09-10
Category Astrophysics
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 026:00
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id 9edd2ead-522c-43d3-ac3c-edc8e95a9705
Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
Homepage URL https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/W3Browse/all/actssrcat.html
Program Code 026:000
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash cb411f231abce39edae20b3ab8fe46574c69b2eff6dba09bf7df0720e8284f1a
Source Schema Version 1.1

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