English

The VLBA Calibrator Search for the BeSSeL Survey

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2015-05-27 v1

Abstract

We present the results of a survey of radio continuum sources near the Galactic plane using the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA). Our observations are designed to identify compact extragalactic sources of milliarcsecond size that can be used for parallax measurements in the Bar and Spiral Structure Legacy Survey. We selected point sources from the NVSS and CORNISH catalogs with flux densities above 30 mJy and within 1.5\degr1.5\degr of known maser targets. Of the 1529 sources observed, 199 were detected. For sources detected on 3 or more baselines, we determined accurate positions and evaluated their quality as potential calibrators. Most of the 1330 sources that were not detected with the VLBA are probably of extragalactic origin.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1103.5438,
  title  = {The VLBA Calibrator Search for the BeSSeL Survey},
  author = {K. Immer and A. Brunthaler and M. J. Reid and A. Bartkiewicz and Y. K. Choi and K. M. Menten and L. Moscadelli and A. Sanna and Y. W. Wu and Y. Xu and B. Zhang and X. W. Zheng},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1103.5438},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

27 pages, 3 figures, 3 tables. Table 3 is available on the homepage of the BeSSeL survey: http://www.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de/staff/abrunthaler/BeSSeL/index.shtml