AMI-CL J0300+2613: A Galactic anomalous-microwave-emission ring masquerading as a galaxy cluster

Abstract

The Arcminute Microkelvin Imager (AMI) carried out a blind survey for galaxy clusters via their Sunyaev–Zel’dovich e ect decrements between 2008 and 2011. The first detection, known as AMI-CL J0300+2613, has been reobserved with AMI equipped with a new digital correlator with high dynamic range. The combination of the new AMI data and more recent high-resolution sub-mm and infra-red maps now shows the feature in fact to be a ring of positive dust-correlated Galactic emission, which is likely to be anomalous microwave emission (AME). If so, this is the first completely blind detection of AME at arcminute scales.