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Description
A well-known property of the gamma-ray sources detected by Cos-B in the 1970s, by the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory in the 1990s, and recently by the Fermi Gamma-ray Observatory is the presence of radio counterparts, particularly for those associated with extragalactic objects. This observational evidence is the basis of the radio/gamma-ray connection established for the class of active galactic nuclei known as blazars. In particular, the main spectral property of the radio counterparts associated with gamma-ray blazars is that they show a flat spectrum in the GHz frequency range. The authors' recent analysis dedicated to search for blazar-like candidates as potential counterparts for the unidentified gamma-ray sources allowed them to extend the radio/gamma-ray connection in the MHz regime. They also showed that blazars below 1 GHz maintain flat radio spectra. Thus, on the basis of these new results, the authors have assembled a low-frequency radio catalog of flat-spectrum sources built by combining the radio observations of the Westerbork Northern Sky Survey (WENSS) and of the Westerbork in the southern hemisphere (WISH) catalogs with those of the NRAO Very Large Array Sky survey (NVSS). This catalog could be used in the future to search for new, unknown blazar-like counterparts of gamma-ray sources. First, the authors found NVSS counterparts of Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope (WSRT) radio sources, and then they selected flat-spectrum radio sources according to a new spectral criterion, specifically defined for radio observations performed below 1 GHz. In their paper, they also describe the main properties of the catalog listing 28,358 radio sources with spectral indices between 1400 and 325/352 MHz between -1.0 and +0.4, and their log N - log S distributions. Finally, a comparison with the Green Bank 6 cm radio source catalog was performed so as to investigate the spectral shape of the low-frequency flat-spectrum radio sources at higher frequencies. This table was created by the HEASARC in July 2014 based on a machine-readable version of Table 1 from the reference paper which was obtained from the ApJS web site. This is a service provided by NASA HEASARC .
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