[NRAO] SIRTF FLS: VLA Survey Image


J. J. Condon, W. D. Cotton, and Q. F. Yin
National Radio Astronomy Observatory, 520 Edgemont Road, Charlottesville, VA 22903, USA
G. Helou, D. L. Shupe, B. T. Soifer, and L. J. Storrie-Lombardi
SIRTF Science Center, California Institute of Technology, Mail Code 314-6, 1200 East California Boulevard, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA
M. W. Werner
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA 91109, USA

The Space InfraRed Telescope Facility (SIRTF) will conduct a First-Look Survey (FLS) covering about 5 square degrees centered on J2000 RA = 17h 18m, DEC = +59d 30' in order to characterize the extragalactic infrared sky two orders-of-magnitude deeper than the IRAS survey. We expect that most of the FLS far-infrared sources will be star-forming galaxies obeying the very tight far-infrared/radio correlation and will be continuum radio sources with flux densities S > 100 microJy at 1.4 GHz. Conversely, radio sources stronger than about 100 microJy are usually powered by star-forming galaxies, plus some active galactic nuclei, and most should be detectable by the SIRTF FLS. Thus a sensitive radio survey can be used to select and identify most of the SIRTF FLS source population before launch. We used the B configuration of the VLA to image the FLS area at 1.4 GHz with 23 microJy/beam rms noise, 5'' resolution, and < 0.5 arcsec rms position uncertainties. The resulting radio image and catalog of 3565 radio components brighter than 115 microJy/beam have been released via the web to expedite follow-up optical identification and spectroscopy. For a detailed description of the FLS/VLA survey, see the paper Condon, J. J., Cotton, W. D., Helou, G., Shupe, D. L., Soifer, B. T., Storrie-Lombardi, L. J., & Werner, W. M, 2003, AJ, submitted. If you publish results based on the FLS/VLA survey, please reference this paper.

The sky coverage of the final VLA image, a mosaic constructed from 35 pointings, is shown here as a border with dots indicating the pointing centers. Use the postage stamp server to get convenient FITS-format images, contour plots, or jpeg images of selected regions in the VLA image. The catalog browser returns lists of sources in selected regions. Alternatively, you can copy the large (8192 X 8192 pixels) gzipped (23830475 bytes) FITS-format image image of the entire field or the entire source catalog as a FITS binary table and software. (Reminder: shift-click will generally force your browser to save the requested image to a file rather than displaying it in a text window.) The FITSview family of FITS image viewers is available for a variety of computer systems. For a short discussion of installing external viewers for FITS files click here.

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is operated by Associated Universities, Inc., under cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation


For more information about the SIRTF FLS/VLA:

Modified on Friday, 31-Jan-2003 14:56:44 EST