The Co-Ordinated Radio 'N' Infrared Survey for High-mass star formation

Example of a cometary UCHII region detected in CORNISH. On the right is a 3-colour infrared image from GLIMPSE in which red=8.0 microns, green=4.5 microns and blue=3.6 microns. The image is dominated by the 8 micron emission, most likely from poly-aromatic hydrocarbons. On the right is a false colour image from CORNISH showing the 5 GHz radio emission. The radio contours conform well to the brightest parts of infrared emission, however, structures larger than 10 arcseconds are resolved out by the VLA in B-configuration.

Welcome to the website for the Co-Ordinated Radio 'N' Infrared Survey for High-mass star formation or CORNISH. This project is the radio continuum part of a series of multi-wavelength surveys of the Galactic Plane that focus on the northern GLIMPSE region (l=10^o to 65^o, |b|<1^o), completed by the SPITZER space telescope in the mid-IR. The same region is being covered by a new near-IR survey by the UKIDSS consortium and will also be part of a submillimetre continuum survey at the JCMT.

CORNISH aims to deliver a complementary, uniform, sensitive, high resolution radio survey to address key questions in high-mass star formation as well as many other areas of astrophysics.

The survey has covered the 110 square degrees of the northern GLIMPSE region in 400 hours with the Very Large Array in B configuration at 5 GHz. This yields 1 arcsecond resolution, which matches well to the resolution of GLIMPSE and UKIDSS and is required to overcome crowding in the Galactic Plane and in massive star forming regions. The noise level varies between 0.2 - 0.4 mJy/beam, which is sufficient to detect UCHII regions right across the Galaxy.

CORNISH constitutes one of the VLA Large Proposal projects (Project Code AH884). Observations were completed in February 2008 and the team is currently refining the data processing and source detection algorithms in preparation for a full release of the data to the community.

Initial Data Release

NEW! Pipeline-reduced image data are now available to the community at large from the Data Products page. This shared risk data release.

Participating Institutions in Alphabetical Order

The University of Leeds and the University of Manchester (JBCA) in the UK lead a team drawn from 12 other institutions worldwide.

	The University of Barcelona, Spain.
	Boston University, USA.
	Centro de Radioastronomía y Astrofísica, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico.
	Cornell University, USA.
	Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory, Canada.
	The University of Hertfordshire, UK.
	The University of Jaen, Spain.
	University of Leeds, UK.
	Liverpool John Moores University, UK.
	The University of Manchchester, Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, UK.
	The University of Maryland, USA.
	The National Radio Astronomical Observatory, USA..
	The University of Southampton, UK.
	The University of Wisconsin, USA.