HerMES: The SPIRE confusion limit

Nguyen, H. T.; Schulz, B.; Levenson, L.; Amblard, A.; Arumugam, V.; Aussel, H.; Babbedge, T.; Blain, A.; Bock, J.; Boselli, A.; Buat, V.; Castro-Rodriguez, N.; Cava, A.; Chanial, P.; Chapin, E.; Clements, D. L.; Conley, A.; Conversi, L.; Cooray, A.; Dowell, C. D.; Dwek, E.; Eales, S.; Elbaz, D.; Fox, M.; Franceschini, A.; Gear, W.; Glenn, J.; Griffin, M.; Halpern, M.; Hatziminaoglou, E.; Ibar, E.; Isaak, K.; Ivison, R. J.; Lagache, G.; Lu, N.; Madden, S.; Maffei, B.; Mainetti, G.; Marchetti, L.; Marsden, G.; Marshall, J.; O'Halloran, B.; Oliver, S. J.; Omont, A.; Page, M. J.; Panuzzo, P.; Papageorgiou, A.; Pearson, C. P.; Perez Fournon, I.; Pohlen, M.; Rangwala, N.; Rigopoulou, D.; Rizzo, D.; Roseboom, I. G.; Rowan-Robinson, M.; Scott, D.; Seymour, N.; Shupe, D. L.; Smith, A. J.; Stevens, J. A.; Symeonidis, M.; Trichas, M.; Tugwell, K. E.; Vaccari, M.; Valtchanov, I.; Vigroux, L.; Wang, L.; Ward, R.; Wiebe, D.; Wright, G.; Xu, C. K.; Zemcov, M.
Bibliographical reference

Astronomy and Astrophysics, Volume 518, id.L5

Advertised on:
7
2010
Number of authors
72
IAC number of authors
3
Citations
270
Refereed citations
265
Description
We report on the sensitivity of SPIRE photometers on the Herschel Space Observatory. Specifically, we measure the confusion noise from observations taken during the science demonstration phase of the Herschel Multi-tiered Extragalactic Survey. Confusion noise is defined to be the spatial variation of the sky intensity in the limit of infinite integration time, and is found to be consistent among the different fields in our survey at the level of 5.8, 6.3 and 6.8 mJy/beam at 250, 350 and 500 μm, respectively. These results, together with the measured instrument noise, may be used to estimate the integration time required for confusion limited maps, and provide a noise estimate for maps obtained by SPIRE. Herschel is an ESA space observatory with science instruments provided by European-led Principal Investigator consortia and with important participation from NASA.
Related projects
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Formation and Evolution of Galaxies: Observations in Infrared and other Wavelengths
This IAC research group carries out several extragalactic projects in different spectral ranges, using space as well as ground-based telescopes, to study the cosmological evolution of galaxies and the origin of nuclear activity in active galaxies. The group is a member of the international consortium which built the SPIRE instrument for the
Ismael
Pérez Fournon