VLA-A Array AL218 Texas Survey Source Snapshots (AL218)

The VLA-A Texas Survey consists of a sample of objects extracted from the earlier Texas Interferometer 365 MHz Survey of radio sources covering a strip of sky from approximately -35.5 degrees declination to +71.5 degrees declination, and complete to flux densities of 0.25 Jy, with positional accuracies of ~1 arcsecond in RA and DEC. The sample is a subset of 71 sources drawn from the area of one optical Schmidt sky survey plate (covering ~6.5x6.5 degrees), Region S861, centered at approximately RA=190.640822109, DEC=-0.273834224277 (J2000), from the UK Schmidt SRC-J Survey.

The Region S861 was initially chosen because it represented the combination of the deepest UK Schmidt plate material (the best optical survey material available at the time of the sample definition in 1989) and the highest galactic latitude, thereby emphasizing the extragalactic nature of the survey and also maximizing the likelihood of having more optical detections. Much more recently, the area of this plate has been covered by a number of important sky surveys including 2MASS, NRAO VLA FIRST, and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) which is now public.