The AAO/UKST SuperCOSMOS Hα survey

The UK Schmidt Telescope (UKST) of the Anglo-Australian Observatory completed a narrow-band H alpha plus [N II] 6548, 6584-angstrom survey of the Southern Galactic Plane and Magellanic Clouds in late 2003. The survey, which was the last UKST wide-field photographic survey and the only one undertaken in a narrow-band, is now an online digital data product of the Wide-Field Astronomy Unit of the Royal Observatory Edinburgh (ROE). The survey utilized a high specification, monolithic H alpha interference bandpass filter of exceptional quality. In conjunction with the fine-grained Tech-Pan film as a detector it has produced a survey with a powerful combination of area coverage (4000 square degrees), resolution (similar to 1 arcsec) and sensitivity (<= 5 Rayleighs), reaching a depth for continuum point sources of R similar or equal to 20.5. The main survey consists of 233 individual fields on a grid of centres separated by 4 degrees at declinations below +2 degrees and covers a swathe approximately 20 degrees wide about the Southern Galactic Plane. The original survey films were scanned by the SuperCOSMOS measuring machine at the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh, to provide the online digital atlas called the SuperCOSMOS H alpha Survey (SHS). We present the background of the survey, the key survey characteristics, details and examples of the data product, calibration process, comparison with other surveys and a brief description of its potential for scientific exploitation.