The Arecibo Dual-Beam Survey: Filling the Gap in the Extragalactic Census

Abstract

We present the Arecibo Dual-Beam Survey (ADBS), a "blind" 21cm survey for galaxies. The ADBS is the largest to date with the Arecibo radio telescope. We were able to achieve an rms sensitivity of 3-4 mJy in only 7 seconds. The ADBS covers substantially more volume than the Spitzak & Schneider (1998) and the Zwaan et al. (1997) surveys. It is surpassed by the Parkes HIPASS survey (Kilborn et al. 1999) but has much better angular resolution and sensitivity. We will discuss the HI sample and our efforts to quantify the completeness and reliability. This is the first survey to use synthetic sources to establish the relation between the flux, line width, and completeness of the survey. An empirical understanding of these quantities is vital to the determination of the mass function. Even if we do not understand all of the reasons why we do not detect galaxies, the empirical understanding allows us to account for them properly. In addition to the more general discussion of the ADBS survey, we will discuss galaxies which have large ratios of HI mass to optical area and probably have extended HI disks. We detect a much higher percentage of these high HI mass to optical area galaxies than are seen in optical surveys indicating that optical surveys miss these galaxies. Among these galaxies are also 7 galaxies with HI masses < 10^8 M_sun. Based on the mass function of Schneider & Rosenberg (this volume), the low mass galaxies are an important part of the general galaxy population.