the FIRST Survey, version 1998Feb

The FIRST survey to produce Faint Images of the Radio Sky at Twenty centimeters began in 1993. It uses the VLA (Very Large Array, a facility of the National Radio Observatory (NRAO)) at a frequency of 1.4GHz, and it is slated to 10,000 deg^2^ to a sensitivity of about 1mJy with an angular resolution of about 5". The co-added images are available on the Internet (see the FIRST home page at sundog.stsci.edu/ for details).

The source catalogue is derived from the images. This version of the FIRST Survey is derived from the 1993 through 1997 observations, and contains 382,892 sources for the north Galactic cap, and 54,537 sources for the south Galactic cap. The northern catalog covers about 4150 square degrees of sky, including most of the area: 7h20m < RA(2000) < 17h20m 22.2{deg} < Dec < 57.6{deg} The southern catalog covers about 610 square degrees of sky, including two narrow strips in the area 21h20m < RA(2000) < 3h20m -11.5{deg} < Dec < 1.6{deg}