The VLBI campaign of observing optically bright radio sources


The project of observing with VLBI 447 optically bright compact radio sources, mainly quasars, was launched in 2006 by Patric Charlot, Geraldine Bourda, and Richard Porcas. The strategy of this program is described in Bourda, G., Charlot, P., Le Campion, J.-F., 2008, AA, 490, 493. The project had four steps:
  1. Detection campaign with EVN in June/October 2007 Bourda, G., Charlot, P., Porcas, R.W., Garrington, S.T., 2010, AA, 520, 113. Of 447 observed sources, 398 were detected, many of them very weak: 5–20 mJy.

  2. OBRS-1 campaign with VLBA+EVN for 48 hours in March 2008 for observing at X and S bands of 105 brightest sources from the sample of 398 objects detected at the previous steps. Image analysis is given in paper Bourda, G., Collioud, A., Charlot, P., Porcas, R., Garrington, S., 2011, AA, 526, 102B. Unfortunately, source brightness distributions in a machine readable form are not available.

    Astrometric analysis is given in paper Petrov, L., 2011, AJ, 142, 105

    The catalogue of positions of 105 sources and estimates of their correlated flux densities at X and S bands is available here. Because the frequency setup was not favorable for astrometry, the position uncertainties are large.

  3. OBRS-2 campaign with VLBA+EVN for 194 hours in March 2010/March 2011 at X and S bands for observing 290 target sources detected in the first campaign. Astrometric results are given in paper Petrov, L., 2013, AJ, 146, 5, preprint arxiv.org/abs/1301.5407. The catalogue in html form with source brightness distributions in FITS-format and calibrated visibilities are available here. The same catalogue in a plane ascii form is available here. Because the frequency setup was not favorable for astrometry, the position uncertainties are large.

  4. OBRS-3 campaign with VLBA+EVN for 48 hours in May 2012 for re-observing some sources in a wide-band frequency setup. The correlator output was made publicly available in November 2015.

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This web page was prepared by Leonid Petrov ()
Last update: 2016.04.22_23:47:08