J/A+A/339/34 J/A+A/339/34 Bright galaxies from the WENSS minisurvey H R de Ruiter P Parma G M Stirpe I Perez-Fournon I Gonzalez-Serrano R B Rengelink M N Bremer Astron. Astrophys. 339 34 1998 1998A&A...339...34D J/A+AS/124/259/ : Westerbork Northern Sky Survey I. (Rengelink+ 1997) Galaxies, photometry Radio sources Redshifts galaxies: distances and redshifts radio continuum: galaxies A search for bright galaxies associated with radio sources from the Westerbork Northern Sky Survey (WENSS) minisurvey has been carried out. A galaxy counterpart was found for 402 of almost 10,000 radio sources. Of these a radio and optically complete sample, with a flux density limit at 325MHz of 30mJy and a limiting red magnitude of 16, can be constructed, which contains 119 galaxies. This paper is the first step of a more general study, in which we aim to derive a bright galaxy sample from the entire WENSS survey (which is now available in the public domain) and thus to construct practically definitive local radio luminosity functions of elliptical and spiral galaxies. We briefly describe the WENSS minisurvey, and the steps that are needed for the optical identification of its radio sources. Due to the large numbers of sources involved (over 200,000) completely automated procedures are obviously needed and we discuss these in some detail. It is shown that with modern utilities projects as described here have become quite feasible. Some results (e.g. a preliminary determination of the local radio luminosity function) are presented.

Seq Running number from minisurvey --- IAUname IAU name of radio source number=1 Names in the form WNBhhmm+ddmm; WN hhmm+ddmm in Simbad --- Speak Peak flux density of radio source mJy Stot Total flux density of radio source mJy Oname Optical catalogue name number=2 ZWG nnn.0nn = Z nnn - nn in Simbad 7 ZW nnn = ZW VII nnn in Simbad --- Otype Galaxy type --- Rmag Red magnitude of the galaxy mag z Redshift of the galaxy --- n_z *: new redshift --- DRA Right ascension difference (radio minus optical) arcsec DDE Declination difference (radio minus optical) arcsec SI Spectral index (325-1400MHz) --- Patricia Bauer CDS 1998Aug14Hans de Ruiter <deruiter@kennet.bo.astro.it> J_A+A_339_34.xml