The Allen Telescope Array Pi GHz Sky Survey. I. Survey Description and Static Catalog Results for the Boötes Field

The Pi GHz Sky Survey (PiGSS) is a key project of the Allen Telescope Array. PiGSS is a 3.1 GHz survey of radio continuum emission in the extragalactic sky with an emphasis on synoptic observations that measure the static and time-variable properties of the sky. During the 2.5 year campaign, PiGSS will twice observe ~250,000 radio sources in the 10,000 deg² region of the sky with b>30° to an rms sensitivity of ~1 mJy. Additionally, sub-regions of the sky will be observed multiple times to characterize variability on timescales of days to years. We present here observations of a 10 deg² region in the Boötes constellation overlapping the NOAO Deep Wide Field Survey field. The PiGSS image was constructed from 75 daily observations distributed over a 4 month period and has an rms flux density between 200 and 250 μJy. This represents a deeper image by a factor of 4-8 than we will achieve over the entire 10,000 deg². We provide flux densities, source sizes, and spectral indices for the 425 sources detected in the image. We identify ~100 new flat-spectrum radio sources; we project that when completed PiGSS will identify 10⁴ flat-spectrum sources. We identify one source that is a possible transient radio source. This survey provides new limits on faint radio transients and variables with characteristic durations of months.