The ATESP survey at 1.4 GHz is based on
snapshot observations of 320 overlapping primary beam fields,
reduced separately and then combined together to
produce 16 big mosaiced images.
The total area surveyed with uniform sensitivity (
noise level
Jy)
covers 25.9 sq. degr.
The spatial resolution is typically
providing
radio positions with internal accuracy of the order of 1 arcsec for
radio sources.
We stress the importance of estimating the relevance and the behaviour of
the so called clean bias effect for any deep survey
obtained with snapshot observations. The source fluxes can be seriously
affected by such problem and for reliable scientific analysis the effect
must be taken into account and corrected for.
Future papers in this series will deal with:
Acknowledgements
IP would like to thank the ATNF and the ATCA for hospitality in Epping and Narrabri for long periods during 1994, 1995 and 1996. A special thank also to the ATNF staff, in particular to Neil Killeen and Bob Sault, for their valuable help in the development of the data reduction pipeline. The authors acknowledge Roberto Fanti for reading and commenting on an earlier version of this manuscript. This project was undertaken under the CSIRO/CNR Collaboration programme. The Australia Telescope is funded by the Commonwealth of Australia for operation as a National Facility managed by CSIRO.
Copyright The European Southern Observatory (ESO)