SIMBAD references

The Simultaneous Medicina-Planck Experiment (SiMPlE) is aimed at observing a selected sample of 263 extragalactic and Galactic sources with the Medicina 32-m single-dish radio telescope in the same epoch as the Planck satellite observations.

The data, acquired with a frequency coverage down to 5 GHz and combined with Planck at frequencies above 30 GHz, will constitute a useful reference catalogue of bright sources over the whole Northern hemisphere. Furthermore, source observations performed in different epochs and comparisons with other catalogues will allow the investigation of source variabilities on different time-scales.

In this work, we describe the sample selection, the ongoing data acquisition campaign, the data reduction procedures, the developed tools and the comparison with other data sets.

We present 5 and 8.3 GHz data for the SiMPlE Northern sample, consisting of 79 sources with δ ≥ 45° selected from our catalogue and observed during the first 6 months of the project. A first analysis of their spectral behaviour and long-term variability is also presented.