LABOCA Science Verification Projects

Latest news (2010 June 24): New BoA release posted.

Since period 80, LABOCA has been offered as a facility instrument, and has remained in great demand by the ESO community. It has lead to more than two dozen publications, and five press releases (RCW120, Galactic Centre Flares, Cygnus A, ATLASGAL, SMM J2135-0102).

This pages summarises the LABOCA Science Verification (SV) projects observed in May and July 2007. ESO requested input from the community by issuing a call for SV projects in August 2006. We received 43 proposals, requesting a total of 584 hours of observing time. Only half of these (listed below) could be observed during the ESO science verification.

SV projects were submitted by all three APEX partners (MPIfR, ESO and Onsala) and the host country Chile. For the joint science verification in May 2007, they were combined in a single pool of observations. This joint science verification data will be validated and released by the APEX Board. These validated data products will be available from the ESO science archive facility and linked below on this web page.

We also provide the data reduction software BOlometer Array Analysis Software (BoA) developed to reduce LABOCA data. All raw LABOCA data will be in the MBFITS format, which cannot be handled with most standard display and analysis tools.

The package is available from the MPIfR homepage in Bonn, but this page serves as a mirror site in Garching to allow ESO users to download the BoA package (27 MB) and BoA Libraries (24 MB). Both packages are needed to run BoA. Installation instructions are given in the README files within these tarballs, and in the BoA User and Reference Manual.

The raw data in MBFITS format are available from the ESO archive. The data can be requested by clicking on the programme ID number of the proposal, or by using the APEX Archive query form.

We request that any publication using APEX data, including the public science verification data on these pages, adds the following acknowledgement as a footnote after the first mentioning of APEX in the body of the text: "This publication is based on data acquired with the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX). APEX is a collaboration between the Max-Planck-Institut fur Radioastronomie, the European Southern Observatory, and the Onsala Space Observatory.".

Useful Links

Overhead calculations

The overhead per observations consists of two parts: (1) the time the telescope needs to perform the requested scanning pattern (spirals or on the fly mapping) and (2) the time needed for source aquisition and calibrations such as pointing, focus and skydip. In the tables below, we provide the time spent on each target, which includes the telescope slewing overhead. For each project, we also give the total time, which includes both the telescope slewing and calibration overheads. From the science verification observations, we have derived the following average overheads:

  • Compact spiral raster of 4 positions in a 27"x27" grid, with each spiral 35 seconds long: takes about 180 seconds (depends on elevation of the telescope), i.e. an overhead of 30%.
  • Raster spiral aimed to give a homogeneous weighting in a 15'x15' area. Consists of 2 raster patterns, one of 9 points covering 1000"x1000", and one of 4 points covering 500"x500" to fill in the intermediate positions in the 9-point raster. Each spiral is 40 seconds in time. Takes about 9 minutes (depending on elevation), i.e. an overhead of 20%.
  • Raster spiral aimed to give a homogeneous weighting in a 30'x30' area. Consists of 2 raster patterns, one of 16 points covering 1800"x1800", and one of 9 points covering 1200"x1200" to fill in the intermediate positions in the 16-point raster. Each spiral is 40 seconds in time. Takes about 20 minutes (depending on elevation), i.e. an overhead of 30%.
  • On the Fly (OTF) mapping. Varies with map size. Examples of overheads: 1810"x1824" map with 48" spacing and scanning speed 120"/s takes about 13 minutes (overhead 37%), and a 7200"x3600" map with 90" spacing and scanning speed 180"/s takes about 31 minutes (overhead 16%).
  • Calibration overheads. In addition to the telescope slewing overheads calculated above, an additional time is needed to correct the pointing and focus of the telescope, and to determine the sky opicity using skydips. The average calibration overhead is ~50%. For projects consisting of many short observations of sources over a large part of the sky, the overhead due to pointing will be larger.

    • Preliminary reductions

    We have reduced some of the SV data using a preliminary pipeline reduction in BoA. These maps are not the final data product, and are included on this page only to illustrate the potential of LABOCA in various observing techniques and scientific goals. The postscript maps can be downloaded by clicking on the source names in the tables below.

    LABOCA Science Verification programs (partially) observed

    • 078.F-9002(A)PI: Sahai: Dusty Disks in Dying Stars - A Pilot Study of Submillimetre Continuum Emission in Pre-Planetary Nebulae
      Status: Partially observed
      Technical setup: Compact raster of 35 s spirals, centred on the most sensitive part of the array (channel 13).
      Total time including all overheads: 5.3 hours
      Source RA(J2000) DEC(J2000) Map size Time observed (incl. slewing overhead)
      01037+1219 01:06:25.98 +12:35:53.0 11'x11' (spiral raster) 33 min
      07399-1435 07:42:16.83 -14:42:52.1 11'x11' (spiral raster) 17.5 min
      08005-2356 08:02:40.7 -24:04:43 11'x11' (spiral raster) 38 min
      10178-5958 10:19:32.4 -60:13:31 11'x11' (spiral raster) 22 min
      10197-5750 10:21:33.7 -58:05:48 11'x11' (spiral raster) 25 min
      11385-5517 11:40:58.8 -55:34:26 11'x11' (spiral raster) 28 min
      23166+1655 23:19:12.39 +17:11:35.4 11'x11' (spiral raster) 33 min
    • 078.F-9005(A)PI: Zavagno: Galactic triggered massive-star formation with APEX-LABOCA
      Status: Partially observed
      Technical setup: 15'x15' raster spiral (described in overhead section above)
      Total time including all overheads: 4.0 hours
      Source RA(J2000) DEC(J2000) Map size Time observed (incl. slewing overhead)
      RCW120 17:12:23.1 -38:27:43 15'x15' (spiral raster) 192 min
    • 078.F-9008(A)PI: Baes: Dust absorption and emission in the edge-on galaxy IC2531
      Status: Completed
      Technical setup: Compact raster spiral
      Total time including all overheads: 1.7 hours
      Source RA(J2000) DEC(J2000) Map size Time observed (incl. slewing overhead)
      IC2531 09:59:56 -29:36:55 11'x11' (spiral raster) 73 min
    • 078.F-9009(A) PI: Zwaan: Cold dust in gas-rich galaxies
      Status: Partially observed
      Technical setup: Compact raster spiral
      Total time including all overheads: 5.7 hours
      Source RA(J2000) DEC(J2000) Map size Time observed (incl. slewing overhead)
      NGC6902 20:24:32.0 -43:39:25 11'x11' (spiral raster) 66 min
      NGC0625 01:35:03.2 -41:26:26 11'x11' (spiral raster) 80 min
      NGC7424 22:57:19.0 -41:04:02 11'x11' (spiral raster) 49 min
    • 078.F-9012(A) PI: Risacher: Do dense cores form from filament fragmentation? The Snake case
      Status: Completed
      Technical setup: raster spirals of 30"x30" (described in overhead section above) and OTF of 1800"x1800" with spacing 25" and scanning speed 120"/s.
      Total time including all overheads: 7.8 hours
      Source RA(J2000) DEC(J2000) Map size Time observed (incl. slewing overhead)
      B72 17:24:10.0 -23:36:00.0 30'x30' (spiral raster + OTF) 5.4 h
      B68 17:22:38.3 -23:49:34.0 11'x11' (spiral raster) 34 min
      B69 17:23:15.0 -24:00:00.0 15'x15' (spiral raster) 25 min
    • 078.F-9017(A)PI: Kramer: Dusty cores in the vicinity of eta Carinae
      Also covering project 078.F-9036(A) PI Gomez
      Status: Completed
      Technical setup: raster spirals of 30"x30" (described in overhead section above)
      Total time including all overheads: 2.2 hours
      Source RA(J2000) DEC(J2000) Map size Time observed (incl. slewing overhead)
      eta Car 10:45:03.59 -59:41:04.3 30'x30' (raster spiral) 115 min
    • 078.F-9020(A) PI: van Kempen: The enigmatic environments of HH 54 and IRAS 12496-7650 (DK Cha): Are they related?
      Status: Completed
      Technical setup: OTF of 3000"x3000" with 60" spacing and scanning speed of 120"/s
      Total time including all overheads: 3.0 hours
      Source RA(J2000) DEC(J2000) Map size Time observed (incl. slewing overhead)
      HH54 and DK Cha 12:54:56 -77:02:15 50'x50' (OTF) 150 min
    • 078.F-9021(A)PI: Mattila: Mapping of cold dust cores in dark cloud L 183 (= L 134N)
      Status: Completed
      Technical setup: 15"x15" raster spiral (described in overhead section above)
      Total time including all overheads: 6.5 hours
      Source RA(J2000) DEC(J2000) Map size Time observed (incl. slewing overhead)
      L183 15:54:09 -02:52:45 15'x15' (spiral raster) 184 min
    • 078.F-9023(A)PI: Ehrenreich: Circumstellar debris disks with LABOCA
      Status Completed
      Technical setup: Compact raster spiral
      Total time including all overheads: 16.1 hours
      Source RA(J2000) DEC(J2000) Map size Time observed (incl. slewing overhead)
      Beta Pic 05:47:17.09 -51:03:59.45 11'x11' (spiral raster) 6.0 h
      eta PsA 22:57:39.04 -29:37:20.05 11'x11' (spiral raster) 6.1 h
    • 078.F-9026(A)PI: Vlahakis: Observing dust in the disk of the Sombrero galaxy (NGC 4594)
      Status: Completed
      Technical setup: compact raster spiral and OTF of 600"x300" with 6" spacing and 120"/s scanning speed
      Total time including all overheads: 5.5 hours
      Source RA(J2000) DEC(J2000) Map size Time observed (incl. slewing overhead)
      Sombrero 12:39:59.40 -11:37:23.0 11'x11' (spiral raster) 4.9 h
    • 078.F-9028(A) PI Smail/Walter: A Public 870um Survey of the Extended Chandra Deep Field South
      Also covering project 078.F-9004(A) PI Dole
      Status: Completed
      Technical setup: two raster spirals (30s each) covering 1000"x1000" in a mosaic covering 250"x250" to fill in the gaps between the rasters. In addition an OTF of 1810"x1824" with 48" spacing and scanning speed 120"/s.
      Total time including all overheads: 47.7 hours
      Preliminary coverage map
      Source RA(J2000) DEC(J2000) Map size Time observed (incl. slewing overhead)
      CDFS 03:32:29.0 -27:48:47 20'x20' (spiral raster + OTF) 31.5 hours
    • 078.F-9030(A)PI: Omont: Submillimetre emission of Lyman alpha blobs at z=2.38
      Status: Completed
      Technical setup: Compact raster spiral
      Total time including all overheads: 19.7 hours
      Source RA(J2000) DEC(J2000) Map size Time observed (incl. slewing overhead)
      J2143-4423 21:42:43.7 -44:25:30 11'x11' (spiral raster) 14.8 h
    • 078.F-9032(A)PI: Boone: Detection of submillimetre galaxies behind AC114
      Status: Partially observed
      Technical setup: Compact raster spiral
      Total time including all overheads: 6.0 hours
      Source RA(J2000) DEC(J2000) Map size Time observed (incl. slewing overhead)
      AC114 22:58:48.4 -34:48:10.1 11'x11' (raster spiral) 4.6 hours
    • 078.F-9033(A)PI: Haikala: Laboca observations of Chamaeleon I
      Status: Partially observed
      Technical setup: OTF of 1380"x1380" with 48" spacing and 96"/s scanning speed
      Total time including all overheads: 1.9 hours
      Source RA(J2000) DEC(J2000) Map size Time observed (incl. slewing overhead)
      Cha_SS 11:03:20.0 -78:00:00 23'x23' (OTF) 57 min
    • 078.F-9034(A)PI: Vlahakis: Dust in SN1987A
      Status: Completed
      Technical setup: Compact raster spiral
      Total time including all overheads: 3.7 hours
      Source RA(J2000) DEC(J2000) Map size Time observed (incl. slewing overhead)
      SN1987A 05:35:28.0 -69:16:13 11'x11' (spiral raster) 2.8 h
    • 078.F-9040(A)PI: Walmsley: ATLASGAL : APEX Telescope Large Area Survey of the Galaxy - A proposal for an unbiased survey of the Galactic Plane with LABOCA
      Status: Completed
      Technical setup: OTF of 7200"x3600" with 90" spacing and 180"/s scanning speed.
      Total time including all overheads: 15.6 hours
      Preliminary combined map
      Source RA(J2000) DEC(J2000) Map size Time observed (incl. slewing overhead)
      GAL-m14.0 17:07:25.3 -40:33:17.2 120'x60' (OTF) 31 min
      GAL-m13.5 17:08:59.6 -40:09:15.0 120'x60' (OTF) 31 min
      GAL-m13.0 17:10:32.7 -39:45:08.1 120'x60' (OTF) 31 min
      GAL-m12.5 17:12:04.7 -39:20:56.5 120'x60' (OTF) 31 min
      GAL-m12.0 17:13:35.7 -38:56:40.5 120'x60' (OTF) 31 min
      GAL-m11.5 17:15:05.6 -38:32:20.2 120'x60' (OTF) 31 min
      GAL-m11.0 17:16:34.6 -38:07:55.6 120'x60' (OTF) 31 min
      GAL-m10.5 17:18:02.5 -37:43:26.8 120'x60' (OTF) 31 min
      GAL-m10.0 17:19:29.5 -37:18:54.0 120'x60' (OTF) 31 min
      GAL-m09.5 17:20:55.5 -36:54:17.3 120'x60' (OTF) 31 min
      GAL-m08.5 17:23:44.9 -36:04:52.4 120'x60' (OTF) 31 min
      GAL-m07.5 17:26:30.7 -35:15:13.0 120'x60' (OTF) 31 min
      GAL-p10.0 18:17:45.7 -20:17:24.1 120'x60' (OTF) 31 min
      GAL-p15.0 18:17:51.8 -15:54:12.0 120'x60' (OTF) 31 min
      GAL-p15.5 18:18:50.8 -15:27:46.7 120'x60' (OTF) 31 min
      GAL-p16.0 18:19:49.6 -15:01:20.4 120'x60' (OTF) 31 min
      GAL-p16.5 18:20:48.1 -14:34:53.2 120'x60' (OTF) 31 min
      GAL-p17.0 18:21:46.4 -14:08:25.1 120'x60' (OTF) 31 min
      GAL-p17.5 18:22:44.5 -13:41:56.1 120'x60' (OTF) 31 min
      GAL-p18.0 18:23:42.3 -13:15:26.2 120'x60' (OTF) 31 min
      GAL-p18.5 18:24:40.0 -12:48:55.6 120'x60' (OTF) 31 min
      GAL-p19.0 18:25:37.5 -12:22:24.1 120'x60' (OTF) 31 min
      GAL-p19.5 18:26:34.7 -11:55:51.9 120'x60' (OTF) 31 min
      GAL-p20.0 18:27:31.8 -11:29:19.0 120'x60' (OTF) 31 min