Galactic foreground constraints from the Python V cosmic microwave background anisotropy data

Abstract

We constrain Galactic foreground contamination of the Python V cosmic microwave background anisotropy data by cross correlating it with foreground contaminant emis- sion templates. To model foreground emission we use 100 and 12 µm dust templates and two point source templates based on the PMN survey. The analysis takes account of inter-modulation correlations in 8 modulations of the data that are sensitive to a large range of angular scales and also densely sample a large area of sky. As a conse- quence the analysis here is highly constraining. We find little evidence for foreground contamination in a analysis of the whole data set. However, there is indication that foregrounds are present in the data from the larger-angular-scale modulations of those Python V fields that overlap the region scanned earlier by the UCSB South Pole 1994 experiment. This is an independent consistency cross-check of findings from the South Pole 1994 data.