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Astrometric accuracy of snapshot fast radio burst localisations with ASKAP

Part of: Australian SKA Pathfinder

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 September 2021

Cherie K. Day Open the ORCID record for Cherie K. Day[Opens in a new window] ,
Adam T. Deller ,
Clancy W. James ,
Emil Lenc Open the ORCID record for Emil Lenc[Opens in a new window] ,
Shivani Bhandari ,
R. M. Shannon Open the ORCID record for R. M. Shannon[Opens in a new window]  and
Keith W. Bannister
Cherie K. Day*
Affiliation:
Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn VIC 3122, Australia Australia Telescope National Facility, CSIRO, Space and Astronomy, PO Box 76, Epping NSW 1710 Australia
Adam T. Deller
Affiliation:
Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn VIC 3122, Australia
Clancy W. James
Affiliation:
International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, Curtin Institute of Radio Astronomy, Curtin University, Perth, WA 6845, Australia.
Emil Lenc
Affiliation:
Australia Telescope National Facility, CSIRO, Space and Astronomy, PO Box 76, Epping NSW 1710 Australia
Shivani Bhandari
Affiliation:
Australia Telescope National Facility, CSIRO, Space and Astronomy, PO Box 76, Epping NSW 1710 Australia
R. M. Shannon
Affiliation:
Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn VIC 3122, Australia
Keith W. Bannister
Affiliation:
Australia Telescope National Facility, CSIRO, Space and Astronomy, PO Box 76, Epping NSW 1710 Australia
*
Corresponding author: Cherie K. Day, email: cday@swin.edu.au
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Abstract

The recent increase in well-localised fast radio bursts (FRBs) has facilitated in-depth studies of global FRB host properties, the source circumburst medium, and the potential impacts of these environments on the burst properties. The Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) has localised 11 FRBs with sub-arcsecond to arcsecond precision, leading to sub-galaxy localisation regions in some cases and those covering much of the host galaxy in others. The method used to astrometrically register the FRB image frame for ASKAP, in order to align it with images taken at other wavelengths, is currently limited by the brightness of continuum sources detected in the short-duration (‘snapshot’) voltage data captured by the Commensal Real-Time ASKAP Fast Transients (CRAFT) software correlator, which are used to correct for any frame offsets due to imperfect calibration solutions and estimate the accuracy of any required correction. In this paper, we use dedicated observations of bright, compact radio sources in the low- and mid-frequency bands observable by ASKAP to investigate the typical astrometric accuracy of the positions obtained using this so-called ‘snapshot’ technique. Having captured these data with both the CRAFT software and ASKAP hardware correlators, we also compare the offset distributions obtained from both data products to estimate a typical offset between the image frames resulting from the differing processing paths, laying the groundwork for future use of the longer duration, higher signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) data recorded by the hardware correlator. We find typical offsets between the two frames of ${\sim}0.6$ and ${\sim}0.3$ arcsec in the low- and mid-band data, respectively, for both RA and Dec. We also find reasonable agreement between our offset distributions and those of the published FRBs. We detect only a weak dependence in positional offset on the relative separation in time and elevation between target and calibrator scans, with the trends being more pronounced in the low-band data and in Dec. Conversely, the offsets show a clear dependence on frequency in the low band, which we compare to the frequency-dependent Dec. offsets found in FRB 200430. In addition, we present a refined methodology for estimating the overall astrometric accuracy of CRAFT FRBs.

Keywords

astrometryfast radio burstsradio interferometryradio transient sources
Type
Research Article
Information
Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia , Volume 38 , 2021 , e050
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Astronomical Society of Australia

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