SuperCOSMOS H-alpha Survey (SHS)

These pages provide access to SuperCOSMOS digitised data derived from scans of survey films of the Southern Galactic Plane taken for the AAO/UKST H-alpha survey (click on this link for access to the main survey reference paper in MNRAS which should be referred to in any published work arising out of using this survey data). It is also possible to flux calibrate data from this survey to reasonable accuracy. Click on this link for access to the MNRAS paper that describes the process. This should be referred to in any published work arising out of using this flux calibration procedure.

Data will be released in a series of contiguous regions starting around the Vela supernova remnant. A mosaic of 20 of the 54 available Vela region H-alpha fields is shown here as an l,b plot.

The survey comprises 3-hour narrow-band H-alpha exposures and contemporaneous 15min Short-Red (SR) broad-band exposures matched in depth for continuum point sources on the same non-standard 4-degree field centres.

Users can extract full resolution 10micron pixel image data (0.67arcsec) up to 30 arcmin across and/or seamless object catalogues over several survey fields from either band. In a future release the broad-band I (IV-N) and first epoch SR (IIIaF) surveys in the Galactic plane region will also be matched in.

First-time visitors are encouraged to read the Introduction and relevant pages under Documentation.

The examples page is a good starting point if you're unfamiliar with astronomical coordinates and explains how to extract images of some interesting objects.

(a) 5-arcmin H-alpha image extraction of known Planetary Nebula PN G250.4-01.3		(b) Matching 5-arcmin SR image extraction. Note PN is now barely visible