C-Band All Sky Survey

C-Band All Sky Survey

C-BASS North at Owens Valley Radio Observatory
Alternative names	C-BASS
Survey type	astronomical survey
Target	Milky Way
Observations	Owens Valley Radio Observatory, Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory
Wavelength	6 centimetre
Website	www.astro.caltech.edu/cbass/
[]

The C-Band All Sky Survey (C-BASS) is a radio astronomy project that aims to map the entire sky in the C Band (5 GHz). It is to be conducted on two radio telescopes, one operating in the Karoo in South Africa, and the other one in California.

The survey is a collaboration between the University of Oxford, University of Manchester, the California Institute of Technology, the Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory (HartRAO), and the King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology. The observations are being made with two telescopes; one based at the Owens Valley Radio Observatory (OVRO) in California, United States, and the other near Klerefontein in the Karoo desert in South Africa.

For an all sky survey two ground based telescopes are required, one in the southern and one in the northern hemisphere. C-BASS North is a 6.1m Gregorian telescope, the dish was donated to the project by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and it has started performing survey observations. C-BASS South is a 7.6-m Cassegrain telescope with a dish donated by Telkom (South Africa). It is currently in the final stages of commissioning at Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory and is forecast to begin survey observations in 2014 when it is deployed in the Karoo. The secondary mirrors on both telescopes are supported by cones of radio-transparent foam to minimize the contamination from ground pick up and to avoid scattering the incoming polarized radiation.