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Description
The First-Look Survey (FLS) of the Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF) will cover about 5deg^2^ centered on J2000.0 (17:18+59:30) in order to characterize the extragalactic infrared sky 2 orders of magnitude deeper than the IRAS survey. We expect that most of the FLS far-infrared ({lambda} = 160, 70, and 24 {mu}m) sources will be star-forming galaxies obeying the very tight far-infrared/radio correlation and will be continuum radio sources with flux densities S>~100{mu}Jy at {nu}=1.4GHz. Conversely, radio sources stronger than 100{mu}Jy are usually powered by star-forming galaxies, plus some active galactic nuclei, and most should be detectable by the SIRTF FLS. Thus, a sensitive radio survey can be used to select and identify most of the SIRTF FLS source population before launch. We used the B configuration of the VLA to make an image of the FLS area at {nu}=1.4GHz with {sigma}=~23{mu}Jy/beam rms fluctuations, {theta}=5'' resolution, and {sigma}_{alpha}_=~{sigma}_{delta}_=~0.5'' rms uncertainties in right ascension and declination. The resulting radio image and catalog of 3565 radio components with peak flux densities Sp>=5{sigma}=115{mu}Jy/beam have been released via the Web to expedite follow-up optical identification and spectroscopy.
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