The FIRST bright QSO survey

With source positions accurate to better than 1" and a point source sensitivity limit of 1mJy, it reaches 50 times deeper than previous radio catalogs. We report here on the results of the pilot phase for a FIRST Bright Quasar Survey (FBQS).

Based on matching the radio catalog from the initial 300{deg}^2^ of FIRST coverage with the optical catalog from the Automated Plate Machine (APM) digitization of Palomar Sky Survey plates, we have defined a sample of 219 quasar candidates brighter than E=17.50. We have obtained optical spectroscopy for 151 of these and classified 25 others from the literature, yielding 69 quasars or Seyfert 1 galaxies, of which 51 are new identifications.