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Description
From the 1.4GHz radio survey of Condon, Dickey, & Salpeter (Cat. <J/AJ/99/1071>) in a region much devoid of rich galaxy clusters at redshifts z<0.43 we selected a "distant" sample of 57 radio sources complete to a 1.4GHz flux density of 35mJy and a "nearby" sample of 36 mostly weaker radio sources which are optically brighter than B~19mag. Our ultimate goals are (1) to study the radio, optical, and near-IR properties of those high-redshift (z~1), moderate-power radio sources in the distant sample and to compare them with that of more powerful radio sources, and (2) to make a comparison of primarily noncluster radio sources in the nearby sample with a companion survey of radio sources in a pair of rich superclusters at z~0.1. In this first paper of a series, we report our new C-array VLA continuum snapshots at 4.86GHz and optical R-band CCD imaging photometry for these two samples and tabulate the observational results on individual sources. Some direct sample statistical properties are also discussed in the paper and summarized as follows: (1) The distant sample: (a) The sample median flux density at 1.4GHz is about 65mJy. (b) The majority (80%) of the sample sources have a steep spectrum between 1.4 and 4.86GHz with a spectral index around 0.9. Nineteen (90%) of the 21 sources that are fully resolved at 4.86 GHz (i.e., angular sizes {theta}>11") have a radio morphology of Fanaroff-Riley (FR) II type. (c) Thirty-seven (88%) of the 42 optically imaged sample sources were optically identified to a limiting R-band magnitude of R~23.5mag. About 15% of the identified radio sources appear to be point sources, and the others are extended galaxies with an appearance similar to nearby elliptical galaxies. (d) Twenty-eight (76%) of the optically identified sources have R>20mag, suggesting that these are probably distant (z>0.8), with a redshift distribution peaking at z~1, where their radio luminosities are about 10 times the break power between the FR I and II classes. (e) We found no strong evidence for the radio and optical axes of the resolved radio sources (i.e., {theta}>5") to be correlated or anticorrelated, nor any evidence for strong clustering around sample radio sources on average. (2) The nearby sample: except for R<15, the sample is dominated by elliptical galaxies with 16<R<18.5mag and a spectral index distribution similar to that of the distant sample. Based on the radial distribution of optical objects around each radio source, we found that the average radio source environment becomes richer from that characteristic of galaxy groups for R<17mag (z<0.2) to that of galaxy groups to clusters at R>18mag (z>0.3) .
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