IAU00457
Presentation type requested: ORAL
THE FIRST DECADE COMES TO AN END
Robert Becker
Univ of California at Davis

In 1993, the VLA initiated the FIRST Survey with the stated goal of imaging the SDSS survey area (~10000 sq. deg.) at 1400 MHz in the B configuration. The survey ended in 2002 after ~3000 hours of observations covering ~9000 sq. deg. The primary achievement of the survey was making the radio sky easily accessible to the astronomical community. With positional accuracy of better than an arcsec, comparisons to optical, IR, and X-ray surveys became a powerful tool for selecting interesting classes of objects. In this talk I will highlight two avenues of research, extremely red quasars and characterizing the radio properties of extremely weak radio sources (an endeavor we call 'nanoastronomy'). Both projects are possible because of the uniformity the VLA FIRST survey over such a large area of the sky.

White Richard L

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