The LOFAR Two-metre Sky Survey: VII. Third Data Release
Abstract
We present the third data release of the LOFAR Two-metre Sky Survey (LoTSS-DR3). The survey images cover 88% of the northern sky and were created from 12,950 hrs of data (18.6 PB) accumulated over 10.5 years. The images were produced through direction-independent and direction-dependent calibration pipelines that correct for instrumental effects as well as spatially and temporally varying ionospheric distortions. In our 120-168 MHz continuum mosaic images with an angular resolution of 6 arcsec (9 arcsec below declination 10) we catalogue 13,667,877 sources, formed from 16,943,656 Gaussian components. The scatter in the astrometric precision approximately follows the expected noise-like behaviour but with an additional systematic component of at least 0.24 arcsec that is likely due to calibration imperfections. The random flux density scale error is 6%, while the systematic offset was previously shown to be within 2%. The median sensitivity of our mosaics is 92Jy beam. Completeness simulations, accounting for realistic source models, time- and bandwidth-smearing effects, and astrometric errors, indicate that we detect more than 95% of compact sources with integrated flux densities exceeding 9 times the local root mean square (RMS) noise. However, the recovered source counts in a particular integrated flux density bin do not match the injected counts until flux densities exceed 45 times the local RMS noise. The Euclidean-normalised differential source counts derived from the survey constrain the radio source population over five orders of magnitude and are in good agreement with previous deep and wide-area surveys. All data products are publicly available, including catalogues, individual-field Stokes I, Q, U, and V images, mosaicked Stokes I images, and data with associated direction-dependent calibration solutions.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2602.15949,
title = {The LOFAR Two-metre Sky Survey: VII. Third Data Release},
author = {T. W. Shimwell and M. J. Hardcastle and C. Tasse and A. Drabent and A. Botteon and W. L. Williams and P. N. Best and H. J. A. Röttgering and M. Brüggen and G. Brunetti and J. R. Callingham and K. T. Chyży and J. E. Conway and F. De Gasperin and M. Haverkorn and C. Horellou and N. Jackson and G. K. Miley and L. K. Morabito and R. Morganti and S. P. O'Sullivan and D. J. Schwarz and D. J. B. Smith and R. J. van Weeren and H. K. Vedantham and G. J. White and A. Ahmadi and L. Alegre and M. Arias and B. Asabere and B. Bahr-Kalus and B. Barkus and M. Bilicki and L. Böhme and M. Brentjens and M. Brienza and D. J. Bomans and A. Bonafede and M. Bonato and E. Bonnassieux and J. M. Boxelaar and S. Camera and R. Cassano and J. Chilufya and M. Cianfaglione and J. H. Croston and V. Cuciti and P. Dabhade and E. De Rubeis and J. M. G. H. J. de Jong and D. Dallacasa and R. J. Dettmar and K. J. Duncan and G. Di Gennaro and H. W. Edler and C. Groeneveld and G. Gürkan and M. Hajduk and C. L. Hale and V. Heesen and D. N. Hoang and M. Hoeft and H. Holties and M. A. Horton and M. Iacobelli and M. Jamrozy and M. J. Jarvis and V. Jelic and M. Kadler and R. Kondapally and M. Kunert-Bajraszewska and M. Loose and M. Magliocchetti and K. Małek and C. Manzano and J. P. McKean and M. Mevius and B. Mingo and A. Miskolczi and A. Misra and J. Moldón and D. G. Nair and S. J. Nakoneczny and E. Orru and M. Pashapour-Ahmadabadi and T. Pasini and J. Petley and J. C. S. Pierce and I. Prandoni and D. Rafferty and K. Rajpurohit and C. J. Riseley and I. D. Roberts and S. Sethi and A. Shulevski and M. Stein and C. Stuardi and F. Sweijen and S. ter Veen and R. Timmerman and M. Vaccari and S. Wijnholds},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.15949},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
15 figures, 2 tables and 22 pages. The catalogues, images and uv-data associated with this data release are publicly available via https://lofar-surveys.org/