Astron. Astrophys. 350, 447-456 (1999)

2. Recent Parkes work

The 64-m Parkes radio telescope has been used to undertake a similar, polarimetric survey of the southern Galactic Plane at a frequency of 2.4 GHz (see Duncan et al. 1995, 1997), with a resolution of . As part of this latter work, the polarimetric data were reduced over the entire survey area (spanning longitudes of ), producing images of the polarised intensity and polarisation position angle out to the latitude limit of the survey (, although over some regions this has been extended to and ).

The Parkes observations revealed the same faint, diffuse polarised emission as had been detected by Junkes et al. (1987a).This polarisation was also seen to have a very mottled and "patchy" distribution. However, the Parkes survey showed this faint and patchy emission to continue out to the latitude limit of the survey (and presumably beyond). Furthermore, the Parkes data provide evidence that a large component of this faint, mottled emission is distributed over the southern Plane in a quasi-uniform manner.

These new and interesting results, emerging from the higher latitude Plane emission, have prompted a re-examination of the 2.695 GHz Effelsberg data. Specifically, we have applied the data reduction software and techniques developed for the Parkes survey to the higher latitude Effelsberg polarisation data (). These data are combined with the lower latitude data of Junkes et al. (1987a), producing polarimetric images out to latitudes of . The longitude range examined is , similar to that of Junkes et al. (1987a).

© European Southern Observatory (ESO) 1999

Online publication: October 4, 1999
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