The Rapid ASKAP Continuum Survey VII: Spectra and Polarisation in Cutouts of Extragalactic sources (SPICE-RACS) second data release – unveiling the magnetised sky

Abstract We present the second data release (DR2) of Spectra and Polarisation in Cutouts of Extragalactic sources from RACS (SPICE-RACS). SPICE-RACS DR2 is derived from the third low-band epoch of the Rapid ASKAP Continuum Survey (RACS-low3) and covers the entire sky from the South celestial pole up to a declination of plus 49 Superscript ring + 49 ∘ $+{49}^{\circ}$ ; approximately 87.5% of the celestial sphere. We produce ‘cutout’ spectral cubes in Stokes I , Q , U around 4 million radio sources and extract spectra towards 5 million radio components. Across our observed band of 799.5–1 087.5 MHz we find an rms noise of tilde 200 mu Jy slash PSF ∼ 200 μ Jy / PSF $\sim\!{200}\,\unicode{x03BC}\text{Jy}/\text{PSF}$ , an angular resolution of tilde 15 double prime ∼ 15 ′ ′ $\sim\!{15}^{\prime\prime}$ , and residual wide-field instrumental polarisation on the order of 0.1%. After de-duplication, our polarisation catalogue contains the detection of 2.5 times 10 Superscript 5 2.5 × 10 5 $2.5\times10^5$ ( 3.4 times 10 Superscript 5 3.4 × 10 5 $3.4\times10^5$ ) Faraday rotation measures (RM) for components with a linearly polarised signal above 8 sigma 8 σ $8\sigma$ ( 6 sigma