The Radio Galaxy Populations of Nearby Northern Abell Clusters

Abstract

We report on the use of the NRAO VLA Sky Survey (NVSS) to identify radio galaxie s in eighteen nearby Abell clusters. The listings extend from the cores of the clusters out to radii of 3 Mpc, which corresponds to 1.5 Abell radii and approximately four orders of magnitude in galaxy density. To create a truly useful catalog, we have collected optical spectra for nearly all of the galaxies lacking public velocity measurements. Consequently, we are able to discriminate between those radio galaxies seen in projection on the cluster and those which are in actuality cluster members. The resulting catalog consists of 329 cluster radio galaxies plus 138 galaxies deemed foreground/background objects, and new velocity measurements are reported for 273 of these radio galaxies. The motivation for the catalog is the study of galaxy evolution in the cluster environment. The radio luminosity function (RLF) is a powerful tool in the identification of active galaxies, as it is dominated by star-forming galaxies at intermediate luminosities and active galactic nuclei (AGN) at higher luminosities. The flux limit of the NVSS allows us to identify AGN and star- forming galaxies down to star formation rates (SFR) less than 1 solar mass per year. This sensitivity, coupled with the all-sky nature of the NVSS, allows us to produce a catalog of considerable depth and breadth. In addition to these data, we report detected infrared fluxes and upper limits obtained from IRAS data. It is hoped that this database will prove useful in a number of potential studies of the effect of environment on galaxy evolution.