THE ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL SUPPLEMENT SERIES 93:145-159, 1994 July

        A SENSITIVE 1.5 GHz RADIO SURVEY AROUND THE NORTH ECLIPTIC POLE

       RONALD I. KOLLGAARD, WOLFGANG BRINKMANN, MARGARET McMATH CHESTER,
    ERIC D. FEIGELSON, PAUL HERTZ, PATRICIA REICH, AND RICHARD WIELEBINSKI


                                 ABSTRACT
 
        A 29.3 deg^2 region surrounding the north ecliptic pole (NEP;
     R.A.=18h00m, Dec.=+66d30m) was mapped with the Very Large Array at
     1.5 GHz to support the deepest portion of the ROSAT all-sky soft X-ray
     survey.  The resulting VLA-NEP survey catalog contains 2435 radio
     sources with flux densities in the range of 0.3-1000 mJy, including
     over 200 fainter than 1 mJy.  The 28 fields of the inner 1.5 deg have
     noise levels sigma ~= 60 uJy, and the 85 fields centered between
     1.5 deg and 3.0 deg from the NEP have sigma ~= 120 uJy.  The
     typical spatial resolution is 20" HPBW, and most positions are
     accurate to < 2".  Approximately 6% of the sources are found to be
     extended with size > 30".  We have compared the VLA-NEP catalog with
     four other radio catalogs made at lower resolution, as well as with
     the NASA Extragalactic Database and find counterparts for ~18% of the
     VLA-NEP objects.  The normalized, differential radio source count is
     in agreement with the previous studies.  Between 1 and 150 mJy the
     slope of the log N-log S relation is 0.68 +/- 0.03.  The catalog and
     related tables are available electronically.

     Subject headings:  catalogs -- radio continuum: general -- surveys --
                        X-rays: general