The Space Distribution of Radio Sources Based on Short Wavelength Surveys

Abstract

The space distribution of radio sources based on short wavelength surveys.

Compact Radio Sources

“…Because of their relatively fiat spectra, the compact sources are more prominent in surveys made at short wavelengths. The Parkes 11 cm Survey (Wall 1977, Peacock & Wall 1980 and the NRAO and Bonn 6 Surveys , Pauliny-Toth et al 1978a, Kellermann 1980b, Kiihr 1980, Ledden et al 1980 between them are complete over the whole sky and provide a complete sample of several hundred of the brightest sources; for limited regions, they reach source densities of 3 x 104 Sr-1. Observational emphasis during the past few years has concentrated on obtaining optical identifications, red shifts, and radio spectra for large numbers of sources over a wide range of flux density, and these data have provided the observational material to study the space distri-bution of the compact radio sources (Kellermann 1980b, Wall et al 1981 andreferences therein).…”

“…It is not clear, however, whether the differences in the source counts can be more readily interpreted as due to the difference in the luminosity functions, and the corresponding difference in the volumes of space sampled by different sources in the two classes chosen to a given flux level. Since the slope of the source count and the value of (I//i/m) depend critically on the flux density interval chosen, it is not obvious in view of the different luminosity functions how to interpret comparisons made at the same flux density level (Kellermann 1980b(Kellermann , K~ihr 1980.…”