ASKAP Data Products for Project AS309 (An ASKAP Survey for Galactic Radio Transients in the Baade's Window): catalogues

Over the past two years an impressive haul of fascinating Galactic radio transient sources on minute-hour timescales have been discovered. These include ultra-long period radio sources, "spider" pulsars, stellar bursts and, most interestingly, sources that defy canonical models and are thus far unclassified. Many of these discoveries challenge our understanding of pulsar emission and give new insights into binary interactions and stellar magnetospheres. The wide field of view provided by ASKAP makes it uniquely suited to probing this parameter space. However, there is currently no programme that is optimised to find these classes of objects.

We request 24h of ASKAP time split into twelve 2h observations spread across 2-3 weeks in order to carry out a transient survey of Baade's window - a region close to the Galactic Centre with low extinction. The choice of Baade's window maximises the potential source counts (due to proximity to the Galactic Centre and Bulge) while minimising the difficulty of classifying them at other wavelengths (due to high extinction). The requested observations are tailored to discovering minute-hour timescale transients, making this GSP distinct to the VAST SSP which has a longer cadence and lower sensitivity.