VLA Sky Survey

Content for the VLA Sky Survery has been moved. Please visit science.nrao.edu/vlass/ for the most up-to-date information.

Click here for access to Quick Look images

News Update: September 5th 2019

The entire sky above declination -40 deg has now been observed as the first epoch of VLASS. Quick Look image products covering the entire survey area are now available. Note also that a paper describing the survey has been submitted to AJ, and is available on arXiv at this link: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1907.01981.pdf.

The Quick Look images are adequate for many scientific uses, but are not designed to meet the  survey requirements for imaging. See the User's Guide to Epoch 1 Quick Look images for details. In particular, the flux density uncertainty for a typical high signal-to-noise detection is approximately 15% due to limitations of the imaging heuristics used. The position accuracy is also limited to approximately 0.5 arcsec. Details of the Quick Look images may be found in VLASS Memo 13. Better images in Stokes I,Q and U, spectral index maps, and spectral cubes around bright sources (also in Stokes I,Q,U) will be made available later. An interactive viewer based on Aladin Lite and HiPS showing the survey coverage (and zoomable to investigate individual sources) is available by following this link. The quicklook images (1" per pixel scale, Stokes I continuum) are posted to the VLA Sky Survey Resources web page. This link also provides the sky tile definitions and observing/processing status. 

The first VLASS papers have appeared: https://arxiv.org/abs/1808.07178 by Villarreal Hernández and Andernach discuss extended radio sources in VLASS, and how its high resolution allowed them to use morphologies to positively identify nine new >1Mpc radio sources. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2018ApJ...866L..22L by Law et al. discusses a slowly fading transient discovered using FIRST and VLASS data.

In these early days of the survey, we especially encourage your feedback about the initial data products. Please contact us at vlass"at"nrao.edu with your comments, or provide feedback through the Science Working Group.

The VLA Sky Survey

The VLASS will consist of a survey of the entire sky visible to the VLA. The survey goals are listed below:

Data Products

NRAO will make Basic Data Products (BDPs) for the survey available through the NRAO archive, including:

• Raw visibility data (available immediately)
• Calibration tables (within 1-2 weeks of observation)
• "Quicklook" 2D Stokes I images (within 2 weeks of observation)
• 2D images in Stokes I (per epoch and cumulative; available ~6-12 months after observations).
• RMS images.
• Coarse resolution cubes (128MHz channels, IQU polarization) around ~10⁶ bright sources.
• Fine resolution (16MHz channel, IQU polarization) cubes around the ~50000 brightest sources.
• Catalogs of source components from both the 2D images and the cubes.

In addition, community groups will produce Enhanced Data Products to supplement the BDPs produced by NRAO, for example rotation measure maps and event brokers for transients. 

Pilot Survey. The VLASS Pilot Survey was completed in September 2016. 196 hours were observed in the fields listed in VLASS Memo #2, and raw data may be found in the archive under the TSKY0001 project code.

VLASS Memo Series. A series of VLASS memos has been written describing various aspects of the survey, ranging from the science case for the survey to technical details of the execution and calibration of the survey. The memo series may be found on the VLASS public wiki.

Reminder: A Google Group has been set up to facilitate communication and discussion on the Science Working Group, open to all.  Please sign up by visiting the above link!

Motivation

In the 20 years since the initial observations were made for the NRAO VLA Sky Survey (NVSS) and the Faint Images of the Radio Sky at Twenty-Centimeters (FIRST), these pioneering programs have defined the state-of-the-art in centimeter radio sky surveys and produced a steady stream of excellent science. Given the enhanced capabilities of the Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), now is an appropriate time to exploit the scientific potential of new centimeter-wavelength sky surveys.

The astronomy community has already recognized that several of the high priority science goals of the 2010 decadal survey New Worlds, New Horizons in Astronomy and Astrophysics could be addressed by a new VLA sky survey. At the May 2013 Radio Astronomy in the LSST Era held at NRAO-Charlottesville many scientists expressed keen interest in employing the VLA to conduct new, wide-area centimeter wavelength sky surveys in support of multi-wavelength synoptic surveys using existing and future facilities, such as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). A community-led Science Survey Group (SSG) defined the science program and key components of VLASS, and NRAO supports its technical definition and implementation.