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[82.01] Modeling of the Contamination of the Cosmic Background by Radio Sources

R.M. Flores (Barnard College/Columbia University), B.S. Mason (National Radio Astronomy Observatory), CBI Collaboration

Observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) with the Cosmic Background Imager (CBI) have revealed radio foreground signals that limit the accuracy of measurements of the anisotropic properties of the CMB such as the Sunyaev-Zeldovich Effect. By comparing CBI data to NVSS (and PMN) data, accurate counts of the number of radio sources in low redshift galaxy clusters were made. It was determined that at 30 GHz there are 1.4 ±0.3 sources per square degree brighter than 30mJy in fields containing galaxy clusters. Comparing these results to the number of radio sources at random in the sky at 30GHz (Mason et al.) a 1.38 sigma difference was found. We therefore do not detect a strong difference in the number of radio sources at 30GHz in galaxy cluster fields. This work was done in collaboration with the Cosmic Background Imager project and with the support of the National Science Foundation and the California Institute of Technology.

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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 35#5
© 2003. The American Astronomical Soceity.