THE FIRST PUBLIC RELEASE OF SOUTH POLE TELESCOPE DATA: MAPS OF A 95 deg2 FIELD FROM 2008 OBSERVATIONS

The South Pole Telescope (SPT) has nearly completed a 2500 deg(2) survey of the southern sky in three frequency bands. Here, we present the first public release of SPT maps and associated data products. We present arcminute-resolution maps at 150 GHz and 220 GHz of an approximately 95 deg(2) field centered at R. A. 82 degrees.7, decl. -55 degrees. The field was observed to a depth of approximately 17 mu K arcmin at 150 GHz and 41 mu K arcmin at 220 GHz during the 2008 austral winter season. Two variations on map filtering and map projection are presented, one tailored for producing catalogs of galaxy clusters detected through their Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect signature and one tailored for producing catalogs of emissive sources. We describe the data processing pipeline, and we present instrument response functions, filter transfer functions, and map noise properties. All data products described in this paper are available for download at http://pole.uchicago.edu/public/data/maps/ra5h30dec-55 and from the NASA Legacy Archive for Microwave Background Data Analysis server. This is the first step in the eventual release of data from the full 2500 deg(2) SPT survey.