MASKING VERSUS REMOVING POINT SOURCES IN CMB DATA: THE SOURCE-CORRECTED WMAP POWER SPECTRUM FROM NEW EXTENDED CATALOG

In Scodeller et al., a new and extended point source catalog obtained from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) seven-year data was presented. It includes most of the sources included in the standard WMAP seven-year point source catalogs as well as a large number of new detections. Here, we study the effects on the estimated CMB power spectrum when taking the newly detected point sources into consideration. We create point source masks for all the 2102 sources that we detected as well as a smaller one for the 665 sources detected in the Q, V, and W bands. We also create WMAP7 maps with point sources subtracted in order to compare with the spectrum obtained with source masks. The extended point source masks and point source cleaned WMAP7 maps are made publicly available. Using the proper residual correction, we find that the CMB power spectrum obtained from the point source cleaned map without any source mask is fully consistent with the spectrum obtained from the masked map. We further find that the spectrum obtained masking all 2102 sources is consistent with the results obtained using the standard WMAP seven-year point source mask (KQ85y7). We also verify that the removal of point sources does not introduce any skewness.