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X. Chen, E.L. Wright (University of California, Los Angeles)
In 2003, Bennett et al. made a search for point sources in the WMAP maps and provided a catalog of 208 detected sources (with 98% reliability). These sources tend to be radio galaxies and quasars, and most of them have strong radiation at the K, Ka and Q bands, but not necessarily at the V and W bands. Here we present a new search for extragalactic point sources in V- and W-band full sky WMAP maps, using a different approach that cancels the ``noise'' due to the CMB anisotropy signal. 29 point sources are found in our study including 16 WMAP point sources, which is a strong proof of the feasibility and reliability of our method. Also since in our method the major noise contribution is due to random errors in the observations which can be minimized by repeated observations, the sensitivity of our study is expected to be greatly enhanced when more years of WMAP data are available.
A comparison to previous surveys shows that 5 of our point source candidates have nearby infrared sources which cannot be positively associated due to insufficient spectral data; and another 3 do not have any companions in a 4-arcmin radius vicinity, which are most likely sources undetected before. We have proposed VLA X-band observations for these unidentified sources. The observation results should be available at the time of this meeting and will be presented along with the WMAP analysis.
We acknowledge the use of the Legacy Archive for Microwave Background Data Analysis (LAMBDA). Support for LAMBDA is provided by the NASA Office of Space Science.
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 37 #4
© 2005. The American Astronomical Soceity.