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Published July 2010 | Version Published
Journal Article Open

HerMES: The SPIRE confusion limit

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Abstract

We report on the sensitivity of SPIRE photometers on the Herschel Space Observatory. Specifically, we measure the confusion noise from observations taken during the science demonstration phase of the Herschel Multi-tiered Extragalactic Survey. Confusion noise is defined to be the spatial variation of the sky intensity in the limit of infinite integration time, and is found to be consistent among the different fields in our survey at the level of 5.8, 6.3 and 6.8 mJy/beam at 250, 350 and 500 μm, respectively. These results, together with the measured instrument noise, may be used to estimate the integration time required for confusion limited maps, and provide a noise estimate for maps obtained by SPIRE.

Additional Information

© 2010 ESO. Received 31 March 2010, Accepted 20 April 2010, Published online 16 July 2010. Herschel is an ESA space observatory with science instruments provided by European-led Principal Investigator consortia and with important participation from NASA. SPIRE has been developed by a consortium of institutes led by Cardiff Univ. (UK) and including Univ. Lethbridge (Canada); NAOC (China); CEA, LAM (France); IFSI, Univ. Padua (Italy); IAC (Spain); Stockholm Observatory (Sweden); Imperial College London, RAL, UCL-MSSL, UKATC, Univ. Sussex (UK); Caltech, JPL, NHSC, Univ. Colorado (USA). This development has been supported by national funding agencies: CSA (Canada); NAOC (China); CEA, CNES, CNRS (France); ASI (Italy); MCINN (Spain); SNSB (Sweden); STFC (UK); and NASA (USA).

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Identifiers

Eprint ID
21132
Resolver ID
CaltechAUTHORS:20101202-143136718

Funding

Canadian Space Agency (CSA)
National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC)
Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique (CEA)
Centre National d'Études Spatiales (CNES)
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI)
Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (MCINN)
Swedish National Space Board (SNSB)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
NASA

Dates

Created
2010-12-02
Created from EPrint's datestamp field
Updated
2021-11-09
Created from EPrint's last_modified field

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Caltech groups
TAPIR , Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC) , Physics Department