Oral Presentation Astronomical Society of Australia Annual Scientific Meeting including HWWS 2013

The ASKAP/EMU Data Challenge (#103)

Andrew Hopkins 1
  1. Australian Astronomical Observatory, North Ryde, NSW, Australia

At the second annual SPARCS workshop held in Sydney on 30 May - 1 June 2012, many tests of radio continuum source finding tools and techniques were presented and discussed. A consensus was reached that a blind source finding challenge would be a valuable addition to our current approaches for understanding the strengths and limitations of the many source-finding tools presently available. The goal of the current Data Challenge is to assess the (1) completeness, (2) reliability, (3) accuracy, and (4) common failure modes, for a variety of source-finding tools. The Data Challenge ran from 30 November 2012 to 15 January 2013, with 8 teams registering to test 11 source finder tools on a set of three simulated ASKAP continuum images. Here I present the outcomes of the Data Challenge, highlighting strengths and weakness of the particular tools tested, and identifying the next steps forward.