A VLA Survey of Rich Clusters of Galaxies II. The Stronger Sources: Maps, Polarisations and Identifications

Abstract

We present detailed radio and optical parameters for the stronger radio sources in 58 Abell cluster fields observed with the Very Large Array (VLA) using scaled arrays at 1·5 and 4·9 GHz. These sources comprise a complete sample with 1· 5 GHz flux density :;::20 mJy and cover a combined sky area of 3·5 X 10-5 sr. The cluster fields were distributed over 24 h of RA and between declinations +350 and -300 Contour maps at two frequencies are presented and source parameters such as position, angular size, spectral index, linear polarisation and core flux density are tabulated. We also derive the emitted power and linear size for those sources close to the cluster centres and therefore highly likely to be cluster members. We attempt to identify all these radio sources with optical images on the Palomar and SERC survey plates and give their accurate optical coordinates, morphologies and apparent magnitudes.