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COSMOS Field VLBA Observations 1.4-GHz Source Catalog

Metadata Updated: September 19, 2025

This table contains the results of a project using wide-field Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) observations at 1.4 GHz of 2,865 known radio sources in the Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS) field, a field which has exceptional multi-wavelength coverage. The main objective of this study is to identify the active galactic nuclei (AGN) in this field. Wide-field VLBI observations were made of all known radio sources in the COSMOS field at 1.4 GHz using the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA). The authors also collected complementary multiwavelength information from the literature for the VLBA-detected sources.The combination of the number of sources, sensitivity, angular resolution and the area covered by this project are unprecedented. A catalog which contains the VLBI-detected sources is presented, the main purpose of which is to be used as an AGN catalog. the complementary multiwavelength (optical, infrared and X-ray) information of the VLBI-detected sources is also presented. The authors have detected 468 radio sources, expected to be AGN, with the VLBA. This is, to date, the largest sample assembled of VLBI-detected sources in the sub-mJy regime. They find a detection fraction of 20% +/- 1%, considering only those sources from the input catalog which were in principle detectable with the VLBA (2,361). As a function of the VLA flux density, the detection fraction is higher for higher flux densities, since at high flux densities a source could be detected even if the VLBI core accounts for a small percentage of the total flux density. As a function of redshift, the authors see no evolution of the detection fraction over the redshift range 0.5 < z < 3. In addition, they find that faint radio sources typically have a greater fraction of their radio luminosity in a compact core: ~70% of the sub-mJy sources detected with the VLBA have more than half of their total radio luminosity in a VLBI-scale component, whereas this is true for only ~30% of the sources that are brighter than 10 mJy. This suggests that fainter radio sources differ intrinsically from brighter ones. Across the entire sample, the authors find the predominant morphological classification of the host galaxies of the VLBA-detected sources to be early type (57%), although this varies with redshift and at z > 1.5 they find that spiral galaxies become the most prevalent (48%). The number of detections is high enough to study the faint radio population with statistically significant numbers. The authors demonstrate that wide-field VLBI observations, together with new calibration methods such as multi-source self-calibration and mosaicking, result in information which is difficult or impossible to obtain otherwise. This table contains 504 entries, including the 468 VLBA-detected sources and, for sources with multiple components, entries for the individual components. Among the detected sources, there are 452 single, 13 double, 2 triple and 1 quadruple source. Source entries have no suffix in their vlba_source_id, e.g., 'C3293', whereas component entries have a, b, c or d suffixes, e.g., 'C0090a' (and a value of 2 for the multi_cpt_flag parameter). This table was created by the HEASARC in December 2017 based on <a href="https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/ftp/cats/J/A+A/607/A132">CDS Catalog J/A+A/607/A132</a> files vlba_cat.dat and vlba_mw.dat. This is a service provided by NASA HEASARC .

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

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Dates

Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date September 19, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from NASA Data.json

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date September 19, 2025
Publisher High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center
Maintainer
Identifier ivo://nasa.heasarc/cosmosvlba
Data Last Modified 2025-09-10
Category Astrophysics
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 026:00
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id f1cb80bd-e533-4afa-95a4-27c3840cf66b
Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
Homepage URL https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/W3Browse/all/cosmosvlba.html
Program Code 026:000
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 58afa1542f4962ab21adae0b8b7a8a474a7163c726f3bc622cce55e51d178443
Source Schema Version 1.1

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