In total, Apertif observed about 2300 square degree of the sky with some pointings covered several times. We process the Apertif data obtained for the field mentioned above. 

To obtain a final mosaic image, the astrometric accuracy of the images was first improved by cross-matching sources from each individual image with those in the LOFAR HBA image and by correcting the astrometry of the Apertif images with the median position offset. The typical offset was found to be about 1'' with only a few exceptions.  After this, the images were combined in the standard way using the mosaic package described in Kutkin et al. 2022. This procedure includes a correction of the images for the compound-beam shapes (we use the same beam models here as in Kutkin et al. 2022) that reconvolves the images to a common angular resolution and reprojects them onto the common sky grid. Because individual Apertif images overlap, the mosaicking leads to an increase in sensitivity.

  • The  Boötes field has been covered by Apertif with 187 compound beam images from 8 different survey observations performed between April 2019 and November 2021. The self-calibration and imaging procedure was performed with the newly developed pipeline described by Kutkin et al. 2023. 
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2 Comments

  1. Alexander Kutkin

    The  Boötes field has been covered by Apertif with 187 compound beam images from 8 different survey observations performed between April 2019 and November 2021. The self-calibration and imaging procedure was performed with the newly developed pipeline described by Kutkin et al. 2023. 


    To obtain the final mosaic image, the astrometric accuracy of the images was first improved by cross-matching sources from each individual image with those in the LOFAR HBA image and by correcting the astrometry of the Apertif images with the median position offset. The typical offset was found to be about 1'' with only a few exceptions. 
    After this, the images were combined in the standard way using the mosaic package  described in Kutkin et al. 2022 (K22). This procedure includes a correction of the images for the compound-beam shapes (we use the same beam models here as in K22) that reconvolves the images to a common angular resolution and reprojects them onto the common sky grid. Because individual Apertif images overlap, the mosaicking leads to an increase in sensitivity. The mosaic image is shown in the left panel of Fig.~\ref{fig:mosaic}, and the noise map is shown in the right panel of this figure. The angular resolution of the mosaic image is 27x11''. The local noise varies over the image between 25 and 50 uJy/beam, with a median value of 40 uJy/beam.



  2. Raffaella Morganti

    We should have a proper link to the paper: Kutkin, A.~M. and 19 colleagues 2023. Apertif 1.4 GHz continuum observations of the Bo{\"o}tes field and their combined view with LOFAR, A&A in press, https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.03710

    Confusing the text because it refers to an image from the paper (mosaic) that will be shown in one of the next pages, so why not here?

    Mention the length of the observations. Somewhere there should also be a remark about the PB correction, with  a link to the paper of Alexander (the one part of DR1)