Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Skip to content

VLA Low-Frequency Sky Survey Redux Source Catalog

Metadata Updated: September 19, 2025

The Very Large Array (VLA) Low-Frequency Sky Survey (VLSS: see Cohen et al. 2007, AJ, 134, 1245) covers 95% of the 3 pi sr of sky area above -30 degrees Declination at most RAs (complete above -10 degrees Declination, while in some areas data are available down to Declinations of -36 degrees) at a frequency of 74 MHz, a resolution of 80", and an average rms map sensitivity of sigma ~ 0.130 Jy/beam. The survey was intended to serve as a low-frequency counterpart to the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO)-VLA Sky Survey (NVSS) at 1400 MHz, allowing spectral information to be compiled for statistical samples of sources. It also provides a low-frequency sky model. In their 2012 and 2014 reference papers, the authors present the details of improvements to data processing and analysis which were used for a re-reduction of the VLSS data, which they dub the VLSS redux or VLSSr. They used the VLSS catalogue as a sky model to correct the ionospheric distortions in the data and create a new set of sky maps and corresponding catalog at 73.8 MHz. The VLSS Redux (VLSSr) has a resolution of 75", and an average map rms noise level of sigma ~ 0.1 Jy beam<sup>-1</sup>. The clean bias is 0.66 x sigma and the theoretical largest angular size is 36 arcminutes. Six previously unimaged fields are included in the VLSSr, which has an unbroken sky coverage over 9.3 steradian above an irregular southern boundary. The final catalog includes 92,965 sources (in the abstract of Lane et al. (2014) it states 92.964 sources). The VLSSr improves upon the original VLSS in a number of areas including imaging of large sources, image sensitivity, and clean bias; however the most critical improvement is the replacement of an inaccurate primary beam correction which caused source flux errors which vary as a function of radius to the nearest pointing center in the VLSS. This table was initially created by the HEASARC in December 2012, based on the FITS file CATALOG.FIT obtained from the NRAO website at <a href="http://www.cv.nrao.edu/vlss/CATALOG/">http://www.cv.nrao.edu/vlss/CATALOG/</a>;. It was updated in July 2014 with the the table data from the latest file on the NRAO website (which was marked as last modified on 26 August 2013). Some of the values for the name parameter in the HEASARC's implementation of this table were corrected in April 2018. 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.

Downloads & Resources

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/vlssr
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 5ee78fa0-ea89-47d5-b3c6-b7d5a7e51293
Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
Homepage URL https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/W3Browse/all/vlssr.html
Program Code 026:000
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 819cd7fd8808e7a02632052b70ad374a563c7d7f12d0b6748b230a825ea257cf
Source Schema Version 1.1

Didn't find what you're looking for? Suggest a dataset here.