AKARI Mid-Infrared All-Sky Survey Observations

AKARI All-Sky Survey observations were carried out in the midto far-infrared spectral region with six photometric bands, during the cryogenic mission phase of AKARI from May 8, 2006 to August 26, 2007. More than 90 The mid-infrared part of the AKARI all-sky survey was carried out with one of the on-board instruments, Infrared Camera (IRC) with two mid-infrared broad bands centered at 9 and 18 um. The 5-sigma sensitivities for point sources are about 50 and 120 mJy, respectively. The spatial resolution is better than 10 arcsecond at both bands. The AKARI mid-infrared survey achieved a deeper sensitivity and a finer spatial resolution than the previous IRAS survey. It will provide a unique and significant database for studies of various fields of astronomy, ranging from star-formation and debris disk systems to cosmology. In this presentation, we will report on the current efforts in preparing the first pointsource catalogue of the two mid-infrared bands. The pointing refinement is carried out via a collaboration with ESA, using the source associations of detected events in the IRC bands and other Near Infrared detectors on the AKARI Focal Plane with reference catalogues based on MSX, 2MASS and IRAS. The mean positional accuracy is expected to be 2.5" (1" for bright sources). Four million events have been detected in the 9 micron band (1 million in the 18um band). It is expected that the AKARI mid-infrared catalogue will contain at least 700,000 sources, thus surpassing the IRAS PSC.