TIME Commissioning Observations: I. Mapping Dust and Molecular Gas in the Sgr A Molecular Cloud Complex at the Galactic Center

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Yang, Selina F., McAtee, Sophie M., Vaughan, Benjamin J., Crites, Abigail T., Butler, Victoria L., Chung, Dongwoo T., Keenan, Ryan P., Pham, Dang, Prakash, Shwetha, Bock, James J., Bradford, Charles M., Chang, Tzu-Ching, Cheng, Yun-Ting, Dunn, Audrey, Emerson, Nicholas, Frez, Clifford, Hunacek, Jonathon, Li, Chao-Te, Lowe, Ian N., Lau, King, Marrone, Daniel P., Mayer, Evan C., Sun, Guochao, Trumper, Isaac, Turner, Anthony D., Wei, Ta-Shun, Zemcov, Michael
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Yang, Selina F.
McAtee, Sophie M.
Vaughan, Benjamin J.
Crites, Abigail T.
Butler, Victoria L.
Chung, Dongwoo T.
Keenan, Ryan P.
Pham, Dang
Prakash, Shwetha
Bock, James J.
Bradford, Charles M.
Chang, Tzu-Ching
Cheng, Yun-Ting
Dunn, Audrey
Emerson, Nicholas
Frez, Clifford
Hunacek, Jonathon
Li, Chao-Te
Lowe, Ian N.
Lau, King
Marrone, Daniel P.
Mayer, Evan C.
Sun, Guochao
Trumper, Isaac
Turner, Anthony D.
Wei, Ta-Shun
Zemcov, Michael
author_facet Yang, Selina F.
McAtee, Sophie M.
Vaughan, Benjamin J.
Crites, Abigail T.
Butler, Victoria L.
Chung, Dongwoo T.
Keenan, Ryan P.
Pham, Dang
Prakash, Shwetha
Bock, James J.
Bradford, Charles M.
Chang, Tzu-Ching
Cheng, Yun-Ting
Dunn, Audrey
Emerson, Nicholas
Frez, Clifford
Hunacek, Jonathon
Li, Chao-Te
Lowe, Ian N.
Lau, King
Marrone, Daniel P.
Mayer, Evan C.
Sun, Guochao
Trumper, Isaac
Turner, Anthony D.
Wei, Ta-Shun
Zemcov, Michael
contents We present the processing of an observation of Sagittarius A (Sgr A) with the Tomographic Ionized-carbon Mapping Experiment (TIME), part of the 2021-2022 commissioning run to verify TIME's hyperspectral imaging capabilities for future line-intensity mapping. Using an observation of Jupiter to calibrate detector gains and pointing offsets, we process the Sgr A observation in a purpose-built pipeline that removes correlated noise through common-mode subtraction with correlation-weighted scaling, and uses map-domain principal component analysis to identify further systematic errors. The resulting frequency-resolved maps recover strong 12CO(2-1) and 13CO(2-1) emission, and a continuum component whose spectral index discriminates free-free emission in the circumnuclear disk (CND) versus thermal dust emission in the 20 km s$^{-1}$ and 50 km s$^{-1}$ molecular clouds. Broadband continuum flux comparisons with the Bolocam Galactic Plane Survey (BGPS) show agreement to within $\sim$5% in high-SNR molecular clouds in the Sgr A region. From the CO line detections, we estimate a molecular hydrogen mass of between $5.4 \times 10^5 M_\odot$ and $5.7 \times 10^5 M_\odot$, consistent with prior studies. These results demonstrate TIME's ability to recover both continuum and spectral-line signals in complex Galactic fields, validating its readiness for upcoming extragalactic CO and [C II] surveys.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_09473
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle TIME Commissioning Observations: I. Mapping Dust and Molecular Gas in the Sgr A Molecular Cloud Complex at the Galactic Center
Yang, Selina F.
McAtee, Sophie M.
Vaughan, Benjamin J.
Crites, Abigail T.
Butler, Victoria L.
Chung, Dongwoo T.
Keenan, Ryan P.
Pham, Dang
Prakash, Shwetha
Bock, James J.
Bradford, Charles M.
Chang, Tzu-Ching
Cheng, Yun-Ting
Dunn, Audrey
Emerson, Nicholas
Frez, Clifford
Hunacek, Jonathon
Li, Chao-Te
Lowe, Ian N.
Lau, King
Marrone, Daniel P.
Mayer, Evan C.
Sun, Guochao
Trumper, Isaac
Turner, Anthony D.
Wei, Ta-Shun
Zemcov, Michael
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
Astrophysics of Galaxies
We present the processing of an observation of Sagittarius A (Sgr A) with the Tomographic Ionized-carbon Mapping Experiment (TIME), part of the 2021-2022 commissioning run to verify TIME's hyperspectral imaging capabilities for future line-intensity mapping. Using an observation of Jupiter to calibrate detector gains and pointing offsets, we process the Sgr A observation in a purpose-built pipeline that removes correlated noise through common-mode subtraction with correlation-weighted scaling, and uses map-domain principal component analysis to identify further systematic errors. The resulting frequency-resolved maps recover strong 12CO(2-1) and 13CO(2-1) emission, and a continuum component whose spectral index discriminates free-free emission in the circumnuclear disk (CND) versus thermal dust emission in the 20 km s$^{-1}$ and 50 km s$^{-1}$ molecular clouds. Broadband continuum flux comparisons with the Bolocam Galactic Plane Survey (BGPS) show agreement to within $\sim$5% in high-SNR molecular clouds in the Sgr A region. From the CO line detections, we estimate a molecular hydrogen mass of between $5.4 \times 10^5 M_\odot$ and $5.7 \times 10^5 M_\odot$, consistent with prior studies. These results demonstrate TIME's ability to recover both continuum and spectral-line signals in complex Galactic fields, validating its readiness for upcoming extragalactic CO and [C II] surveys.
title TIME Commissioning Observations: I. Mapping Dust and Molecular Gas in the Sgr A Molecular Cloud Complex at the Galactic Center
topic Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
Astrophysics of Galaxies
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.09473