The FIRST Survey Catalog


This is the description of the 1997 April 24 FIRST catalog. It has been replaced by a newer catalog. Old released versions of the FIRST catalog are made available for archival purposes for the benefit of those who have already started research programs based on those catalogs. The newest version is always preferred for new projects.

See the catalog history for information on changes in the various FIRST catalogs.


Catalogs for the north Galactic cap (236,177 sources) and the south Galactic cap (31,870 sources), derived from the 1993 through 1996 observations, are currently available as gzip-compressed ASCII files (catalog_north_97apr24.bin.gz, catalog_south_97apr24.bin.gz). The file sizes are 7.5/1.0 Mbytes compressed (20.3/3.4 Mbytes uncompressed) for the northern/southern catalogs. The northern catalog covers about 2575 square degrees of sky, including most of the area:

    7h20m < RA(2000) < 17h20m     22.2° < Dec < 42.5°

The southern catalog covers about 350 square degrees of sky, including most of the area:

    21h20m < RA(2000) < 3h20m     -2.5° < Dec < 1.6°

The catalog is on-line and can be searched using the FIRST Search Engine. However, for large-scale investigations it will be necessary to obtain the complete catalog. This document describes the catalog format.

The catalog is sorted by right ascension and has the following format:

    RA  (2000)   Dec      W    Fpeak      Fint    Rms     Maj    Min    PA   fMaj   fMin   fPA Field Name
06 50 44.043 +31 10 00.09       1.16      0.64   0.147   0.00   0.00  42.0   4.50   3.59  42.0 06510+31143E
06 51 02.181 +31 11 13.33       1.58      2.66   0.139   4.99   3.94  91.6   7.35   6.69  91.6 06510+31143E
06 51 03.826 +31 13 03.32 W     1.02      1.42   0.137   7.63   0.00   2.4   9.35   4.34   2.4 06510+31143E
06 51 06.134 +31 19 02.00       7.29      9.64   0.145   4.09   1.82 131.3   6.77   5.70 131.3 06510+31143E
06 51 10.784 +31 11 28.80      72.36    100.79   0.141   4.18   2.49   9.8   6.83   5.95   9.8 06510+31143E
Note that this format has changed from older versions of the catalog.


Previously released versions of the FIRST catalogs are still available for historical purposes. We recommend that the new catalog be used where possible for all projects.



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Richard L. White, rlw@stsci.edu
1997 April 24