Radio Galaxy Zoo Talk

Optical Counterparts for 70,000 Radio Sources: APM Identifications for the FIRST Radio Survey

  • JeanTate by JeanTate

    I'd like to suggest this paper for discussion in the Journal Club: "Optical Counterparts for 70,000 Radio Sources: APM Identifications for the FIRST Radio Survey", by McMahon+ 2002 in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, Volume 143, Issue 1, pp. 1-23 (arXiv preprint abstract). Here's the abstract:

    We describe a program to identify optical counterparts to radio
    sources from the VLA FIRST survey using the Cambridge APM scans of the
    POSS-I plates. We use radio observations covering 4150 square degrees
    of the north Galactic cap to a 20 cm flux density threshold of 1.0
    mJy; the 382,892 sources detected all have positional uncertainties of
    <1" (radius of 90% confidence). Our description of the APM catalog,
    derived from the 148 POSS-I O and E plates covering this region,
    includes an assessment of its astrometric and photometric accuracy, a
    photometric recalibration using the Minnesota APS catalog, a
    discussion of the classification algorithm, and quantitative tests of
    the catalog's reliability and completeness. We go on to show how the
    use of FIRST sources as astrometric standards allows us to improve the
    absolute astrometry of the POSS plates by nearly an order of magnitude
    to ~0.15" rms. Matching the radio and optical catalogs yields
    counterparts for over 70,000 radio sources; we include detailed
    discussions of the reliability and completeness of these
    identifications as a function of optical and radio morphology, optical
    magnitude and color, and radio flux density. An analysis of the
    problem of radio sources with complex morphologies (e.g., double-lobed
    radio galaxies) is included. We conclude with a brief discussion of
    the source classes represented among the radio sources with identified
    counterparts.

    I'm interested in discussing this paper, seeing as how some of us are using WISE and SDSS to try to identify host galaxies.

    Posted

  • ivywong by ivywong scientist, admin

    This is probably related to a newer paper by Yan et al 2012: http://arxiv.org/abs/1209.2065 which attempts to match up WISE with SDSS galaxies

    Posted