First Results from 8.4 GHz VLA Imaging of 1800 Southern Sky Parkes-MIT-NRAO (PMN) Radio Sources
Session 109 -- Extragalactic Radio Sources, Jets
Display presentation, Thursday, 12, 1995, 9:20am - 6:30pm

## [109.03] First Results from 8.4 GHz VLA Imaging of 1800 Southern Sky Parkes-MIT-NRAO (PMN) Radio Sources

A.Fletcher, S.Conner, B.Burke (MIT)

The Parkes-MIT-NRAO (PMN) Sky Survey at 5 GHz radio frequency revealed 36,640 sources over an area of 4.51 steradians, down to a limiting flux density of typically 35 mJy. The estimated completeness is greater than 95\%, and near the limiting flux the reliability is at least 90\% (Griffith \& Wright, A.J. 105 (5) May 1993). We have made VLA X-Band (3.6 cm) A-Array continuum emission snapshots of a bright, flux density-limited sample of 1800 sources from the PMN Survey list. These lie in the declination range $-30\deg < \delta < 0\deg$. Our sample selection was applied to yield two groups: the first consists of about 1000 flat-spectrum radio sources: $F_{\nu} \propto \nu^{-\alpha}, \alpha < 0.5$. The second group contains 800 sources whose radio spectral index was not selected. This large database of VLA snapshots of extragalactic radio sources provides a useful stepping stone towards any future statistical and individual astronomical work on such radio-emitting AGN. Here, we present some representative and interesting preliminary results from our data reduction pipeline: (a) incidence rates of sources with various radio morphologies; (b) a small but significant sample of the as-yet-uncharacterized class of close double lobe radio galaxies $(\theta < 2'')$; (c) some gravitational lens candidates; (d) optical identification efforts targeting these lens candidates and close doubles. We suggest some future work that should be done in order to extract as much statistical information as possible from this sample, with an emphasis on estimating source sizes and morphologies in the context of radio-emitting AGN.