VLA-COSMOS Survey 324-MHz Continuum Source Catalog

This table contains a source catalog based on 90-cm (324-MHz) Very Large Array (VLA) imaging of the COSMOS field, comprising a circular area of 3.14 square degrees centered on 10&lt;sup&gt;h&lt;/sup&gt; 00&lt;sup&gt;m&lt;/sup&gt; 28.6&lt;sup&gt;s&lt;/sup&gt;, _02&lt;sup&gt;o&lt;/sup&gt; 12&#39; 21&quot; (J2000.0 RA and Dec). The image from the merger of 3 nights of observations using all 27 VLA antennas had an effective total integration time of ~ 12 hours, an 8.0 arcsecond x 6.0 arcsecond angular resolution, and an average rms of 0.5 mJy beam&lt;sup&gt;-1&lt;/sup&gt;. The extracted catalog contains 182 sources (down to 5.5 sigma), 30 of which are multi-component sources. Using Monte Carlo artificial source simulations, the authors derive the completeness of the catalog, and show that their 90-cm source counts agree very well with those from previous studies. In their paper, the authors use X-ray, NUV-NIR and radio COSMOS data to investigate the population mix of this 90-cm radio sample, and find that the sample is dominated by active galactic nuclei. The average 90-20 cm spectral index (S_nu_~ nu&lt;sup&gt;alpha&lt;/sup&gt;, where S&lt;sub&gt;nu&lt;/sub&gt; is the flux density at frequency nu and alpha the spectral index) of the 90-cm selected sources is -0.70, with an interquartile range from -0.90 to -0.53. Only a few ultra-steep-spectrum sources are present in this sample, consistent with results in the literature for similar fields. These data do not show clear steepening of the spectral index with redshift. Nevertheless, this sample suggests that sources with spectral indices steeper than -1 all lie at z &gt;~ 1, in agreement with the idea that ultra-steep-spectrum radio sources may trace intermediate-redshift galaxies (z &gt;~ 1). Using both the signal and rms maps (see Figs. 1 and 2 in the reference paper) as input data, the authors ran the AIPS task SAD to obtain a catalog of candidate components above a given local signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) threshold. The task SAD was run four times with search S/N levels of 10, 8, 6 and 5, using the resulting residual image each time. They recovered all the radio components with a local S/N &gt; 5.00. Subsequently, all the selected components were visually inspected, in order to check their reliability, especially for the components near strong side-lobes. After a careful analysis, a S/N threshold of 5.50 was adopted as the best compromise between a deep and a reliable catalog. The procedure yielded a total of 246 components with a local S/N &gt; 5.50. More than one component, identified in the 90-cm map sometimes belongs to a single radio source (e.g. large radio galaxies consist of multiple components). Using the 90-cm COSMOS radio map, the authors combined the various components into single sources based on visual inspection. The final catalog (contained in this HEASARC table) lists 182 radio sources, 30 of which have been classified as multiple, i.e. they are better described by more than a single component. Moreover, in order to ensure a more precise classification, all sources identified as multi-component sources have been also double-checked using the 20-cm radio map. The authors found that all the 26 multiple 90-cm radio sources within the 20-cm map have 20-cm counterpart sources already classified as multiple. The authors have made use of the VLA-COSMOS Large and Deep Projects over 2 square degrees, reaching down to an rms of ~15 &micro;Jy beam&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; ^ at 1.4 GHz and 1.5 arcsec resolution (Schinnerer et al. 2007, ApJS, 172, 46: the VLACOSMOS table in the HEASARC database). The 90-cm COSMOS radio catalog has, however, been extracted from a larger region of 3.14 square degrees (see Fig. 1 and Section 3.1 of the reference paper). This implies that a certain number of 90-cm sources (48) lie outside the area of the 20-cm COSMOS map used to select the radio catalog. Thus, to identify the 20-cm counterparts of the 90-cm radio sources, the authors used the joint VLA-COSMOS catalog (Schinnerer et al. 2010, ApJS, 188, 384: the VLACOSMJSC table in the HEASARC database) for the 134 sources within the 20-cm VLA-COSMOS area and the VLA- FIRST survey (White et al. 1997, ApJ, 475, 479: the FIRST table in the HEASARC database) for the remaining 48 sources. The 90-cm sources were cross-matched with the 20-cm VLA-COSMOS sources using a search radius of 2.5 arcseconds, while the cross-match with the VLA-FIRST sources has been done using a search radius of 4 arcseconds in order to take into account the larger synthesized beam of the VLA-FIRST survey of ~5 arcseconds. Finally, all the 90 cm - 20 cm associations were visually inspected in order to ensure also the association of the multiple 90-cm radio sources for which the value of the search radius used during the cross-match could be too restrictive. In summary, out of the total of 182 sources in the 90-cm catalog, 168 have counterparts at 20 cm. This table was created by the HEASARC in October 2014 based on an electronic version of Table 1 from the reference paper which was obtained from the COSMOS web site at IRSA, specifically the file vla-cosmos_327_sources_published_version.tbl at &lt;a href="http://irsa.ipac.caltech.edu/data/COSMOS/tables/vla/"&gt;http://irsa.ipac.caltech.edu/data/COSMOS/tables/vla/&lt;/a&gt;. This is a service provided by NASA HEASARC .

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Organization: National Aeronautics and Space Administration