Public release of Apertif SVC data

© ASTRON

Today we announce the first official data release of Apertif data in the Apertif Long Term Archive (ALTA - alta.astron.nl). This is a release of both the imaging and time-domain data from the Science Verification Campaign (SVC) which was undertaken in spring 2019 to demonstrate the scientific readiness of the Apertif system. This release serves as a precursor to future scientific data releases from the surveys, which started July 1st 2019. The first public data release for the full time-domain and imaging surveys is expected in early 2020.

The current release contains the raw imaging and time-domain data from the SVC, plus a set of fully processed imaging observations for a single pointing (S2248+33). These observations have been processed by the Apercal pipeline on the Happili cluster and are the first high quality imaging data from Apertif available for public use. These processed data products include calibration tables, calibrated visibilities, multi-frequency synthesis continuum images, polarization images and cubes, and uncleaned neutral hydrogen (HI) line and beam cubes. Processed data products for four more imaging fields will be added in the coming weeks as the processing and quality assurance on them is finalized. The time-domain products consist of high-time resolution filterbank data in the PSRFITS standard, a snapshot of part of the dynamical sky in this period. The accompanying release papers with the full description of data taking, processing, and quality assessment and validation will be available soon.