MUNA Lunch Talk:

Amy Kimball

University of Washington

A Unified Catalog of Radio Objects (Detected by FIRST, NVSS, WENSS, GB6 and SDSS)

September 22

12:10PM, Room 230, NRAO, Edgemont Road

Abstract:

I will present a large unified database of over a million radio objects detected at 6, 20, and 92 cm, as well as at optical wavelengths. The scientific motivation behind this project is a test of the AGN unification paradigm, based on a comparison of observed populations with mock catalogs created using several state-of-the-art models of cosmological AGN evolution. The entries in the unified catalog are defined by a detection in at least one of the two 20 cm surveys (FIRST and NVSS), and are supplemented by observations at other wavelengths when available. This publicly-available resource is the largest and deepest multi-wavelength radio-optical database to date, and offers unprecedented opportunities for detailed studies of radio sources. Our preliminary analysis focuses on a 3000 deg2 region where all the contributing surveys overlap on the sky; it contains 140,000 sources detected by both 20cm surveys, with 64,000 further detected at 92cm, and 12,000 further detected at 6cm, and with about 1/3 of all sources detected at optical wavelengths by SDSS. I will describe an automated morphology classification scheme that defines nine radio-optical classes of objects, and will discuss the distributions of those classes in radio and optical morphology-flux-spectral slope diagrams.

Please see Amy's website for further information on the catalog.