A large-scale radio polarization survey of the southern sky at 21 cm

Abstract

We have successfully reduced the polarization data from the recently published 21 cm continuum survey of the southern sky carried out with a 30-m antenna at Villa Elisa (Argentina). We describe the reduction and calibration methods of the survey. The result is a fully sampled survey, which covers declinations from -90 degrees to -10 degrees with a typical rms-noise of 15 mK TB. The map of polarized intensity shows large regions with smooth low-level emission, but also a number of enhanced high-latitude features. Most of these regions have no counterpart in total intensity and indicate Faraday active regions.