Apertif DR1 - Polarization cubes
Apertif is a phased-array feed system for the Westerbork Synthesis
Radio Telescope (WSRT), providing forty instantaneous beams over 300
MHz of bandwidth. This first data release includes observations in the
first year of survey operations, from 1 July 2019 through 30 June
2020. The data release includes all raw observational data for a total
of 221 observations of 160 independent target fields, covering
approximately one thousand square degrees of sky. A subset of
processed data products, meeting specified quality assessment criteria
as outlined in Adams et al. (2022), are also released. Images and
cubes are released on a per beam basis, and 3374 beams (of 7640
considered) are included in this data release. The processed data
products are only available for the upper 150 MHz of the band over the
range 1280–1430 MHz. The first 12.5 MHz of data are flagged due to
persistent RFI resulting in a nominal bandwidth of 137.5 MHz and
central frequency of 1361.25 MHz. The data products are not
primary-beam corrected, however the primary-beam images are provided
separately that may be used for mosaicking or for correction of
individual images. This service queries the polarization cubes from
the first data release of Apertif. In order to prevent bandwidth
depolarization and enable rotation measure synthesis studies, Stokes Q
and U cubes with a frequency resolution of 6.25 MHz are produced. The
cubes have a smaller spatial extent of 2.7 deg × 2.7 deg (2049 × 2049
pixels, with 4''/pixel ) than the continuum or Stokes V images but
still extend well beyond the primary beam.