Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: Widefield single-dish telescopes operating at (sub-)mm wavelengths ($λ\sim 4$~mm to 350~$μ$m) tend to feature much faster mapping speeds than radio interferometers at the same wavelengths, and are more suitable for measuring signals on larger spatial scales. However, the data are dominated by atmospheric fluctuations on large scales and by photon and instrumental noise on smaller scales, making it difficult to recover the true astronomical sky. We build on maria-nifty, a Gaussian process-based Bayesian imaging framework for reconstructing sky maps from single-dish telescope data, implemented on top of Numerical Information Field Theory (NIFTy). It uses modular generative models to efficiently separate the astronomical signal from atmospheric emission while providing pixel-wise uncertainty quantification for the reconstructed sky maps. Moreover, our method cleanly separates individual astrophysical signals, even though they are superposed on the sky. Following its successful validation on synthetic time-ordered data generated using the maria software, we apply it to real data observed with the MUSTANG-2 bolometric array on the 100-meter Green Bank Telescope. For the galaxy cluster RXJ1347.5-1145, we separate the extended cluster emission from the compact source at its centre and obtain a smoother map with fewer artefacts compared to a standard maximum-likelihood reconstruction using the same data. The JAX-based implementation and GPU acceleration provide the basis for applying the method to the vastly larger datasets that the next generation of single-dish telescopes will deliver.
Source: arXiv (Cornell University)
Language: English
Subfield: Astronomy and Astrophysics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
Awards: G1105844351, High Resolution Observations of the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect in Clusters of Galaxies at 90 GHz Using the GBT, G2658540836, Verbundprojekt 05D2022 - ErUM-IFT: Informationsfeldtheorie für Experimente an Großforschungsanlagen. Teilprojekt 1., G3715634343, Consolidating plans for the Atacama Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope, G3984487147, G4066435496, EXC 2094: ORIGINS: Vom Ursprung des Universums bis zu den ersten Bausteinen des Lebens, G4670103262, G505147653, G5635532810, MUSTANG2: An Advanced 90 GHz Camera for the GBT, G617610489, Towards an Atacama Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope, G7805626310, G7863371703, G8284171658, G8497050386
OpenAlex ID: W7223150326