Bob David Rick

The VLA FIRST Survey

[Amusing Picture]

Faint Images of the Radio Sky at Twenty-Centimeters

Robert H. Becker, David J. Helfand, Richard L. White, Michael D. Gregg, Sally A. Laurent-Muehleisen

FIRST -- Faint Images of the Radio Sky at Twenty-cm -- is a project designed to produce the radio equivalent of the Palomar Observatory Sky Survey over 10,000 square degrees of the North and South Galactic Caps. Using the NRAO Very Large Array (VLA) and an automated mapping pipeline, we produce images with 1.8" pixels, a typical rms of 0.15 mJy, and a resolution of 5". At the 1 mJy source detection threshold, there are ~90 sources per square degree, ~35% of which have resolved structure on scales from 2-30". 30% of the sources have counterparts in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

What's New: New FIRST catalog released, 2014 December 17
Survey Description Catalogs
Status of observations Images
Publication List Search the FIRST catalog
Acknowledgements Retrieve Image Cutouts
About the picture