GCN Circular 18655

K. Bannister (CSIRO), J. Marvil (CSIRO), I. Heywood (CSIRO), R. Wark 
(CSIRO), M. Bell (CSIRO), T. Murphy (University of Sydney), D. Kaplan 
(UWM), S. Chatterjee (Cornell) on behalf of the ASKAP/VAST team.

We observed the Southern probability maximum with BETA - the ASKAP 
engineering test array. The observations comprise 18 pointings covering 
a strip approximately 40 degrees long and 5 degrees high, centered on 
07h27m51s -70d15m39s (J2000) and following the ridge of the probability 
maximum.

We observed at center frequency of 863.5 MHz with a a bandwidth of 300 
MHz. Observing began at 2015-09-26 13:15:00 UT and continued for 19.5 hrs.

Our images have an average RMS of 1 mJy/beam. We cross matched all 
sources from our images with the SUMSS and MGPS2 catalogs, which are 
complete above 14 mJy. We found 3 sources not in the catalog, but visual 
inspection of the SUMSS [1] and MPGS2 [2] images indicates the presence 
of a source in all cases. Thus, we detect no transients above 14 mJy 
with respect to those surveys.

We continue to process another earlier observation of the same field.


[1] Mauch et al. 2003, MNRAS, 342, 1117
[2] Murphy et al. 2007, MNRAS, 382, 382