Polarization Catalogue

PolCat: A Multi-wavelength Linear Polarization Catalogue of Radio Sources

This page contains information and links to data files from PolCat:“A Broadband Polarization Catalog of Extragalactic Radio Sources” by Farnes, J. S., Gaensler, B. M., & Carretti, E., 2014, ApJS, 212, 15. The catalog provides multiwavelength (from 400 MHz to 100 GHz) linear polarization and total intensity radio data for polarized sources from the NRAO VLA Sky Survey. These sources have been cross-matched with a number of complementary measurements—combining data from major radio polarization and total intensity surveys such as AT20G, B3-VLA, GB6, NORTH6CM, Texas, and WENSS, together with other polarization data published over the last 50 years. The catalog provided the largest published compilation of both polarized spectral energy distributions (SEDs) and radio spectral indices and their curvature, alongside models of these SEDs and information on each source’s optical counterpart.

The Data

Note that the data are in binary FITS table format and have been gzipped. After gunzipping, the files can be read with your favourite FITS reader such as Topcat or fv, or packages such as PyFITS or the IDL Astronomy Library.

Note that the .tar archive contains two .fits files:

  • Full-catalog.fits – The accumulated data for all 37,543 objects from the “Taylor, Stil & Sunstrum (2009) catalog”
  • SED-catalog.fits – A subset of the data, containing only the 951 objects that have three or more datapoints in the polarized spectral energy distribution.

The data are also available on the Vizier Archive.

If you have any questions or comments, please get in contact.

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