SOFIA/HAWC+ Far-InfraRed Polarimetric Large Area CMZ Exploration (FIREPLACE) Survey I: General Results from the Pilot Program

Understand

We present the first data release (DR1) of the Far-Infrared Polarimetric Large Area CMZ Exploration (FIREPLACE) survey.

• The survey was taken using the 214-micron band of the HAWC+ instrument with the SOFIA telescope (19.6$'$ resolution; 0.7 pc).
• In this first data release we present dust polarization observations covering a ~0.5$\deg$ region of the Galactic Center's Central Molecular Zone (CMZ), approximately centered on the Sgr B2 complex.
• We detect ~25,000 Nyquist-sampled polarization pseudovectors, after applying the standard SOFIA cuts for minimum signal-to-noise in fractional polarization and total intensity of 3 and 200, respectively.