From NVSS to RACS: Identifying truly Compact and Steep spectrum Radio sources

TL;DR

This study leverages recent high-resolution radio surveys to identify and characterize compact, steep-spectrum radio sources, improving detection accuracy and aiding the study of exotic astrophysical objects.

Contribution

It introduces a new image-domain method using RACS data to better identify and classify compact, steep-spectrum radio sources previously missed or mischaracterized.

Findings

Identified 66 compact sources with steep spectral indices.

Discovered 87 diffuse or resolved sources.

Found 18 sources undetected in both surveys, indicating very steep spectra.

Abstract

Compact, steep-spectrum radio sources are key tracers of exotic astrophysical objects such as pulsars and high-redshift radio galaxies. All-sky radio surveys at different frequencies, like the TIFR-GMRT Sky Survey (TGSS) and the NRAO VLA Sky Survey (NVSS), have been usually exploited to identify such tracers. The more recent imaging survey, Rapid ASKAP Continuum Survey (RACS), with higher angular resolution and better sensitivity offers an avenue for a far better identification and characterization of compact, steep-spectrum sources. In this work, using publicly available RACS images at 887 MHz and 1.4 GHz, we present an image-domain characterization of 171 compact source candidates between declinations -40 degrees and +41 degrees, that were detected and appeared compact at 147 MHz in TGSS but not detected at 1.4 GHz in NVSS. Our detailed characterization resulted in the identification of 66 compact sources, 87 non-compact, diffuse or resolved sources, and 18 sources that are not detected in either of the RACS or NVSS images, implying spectral indices steeper than -2.0. Out of the 66 compact sources, 34 have spectral indices steeper than -1.5. We demonstrate that a large fraction of the sources in our sample were earlier not detected and resulted in incorrect spectral index limits due to poor imaging quality of NVSS in the Galactic plane. We present the spectral indices and morphological classification of all the sources in our sample and discuss their usefulness in identifying and studying interesting sources such as radio pulsars, high-redshift radio galaxies, and other extragalactic sources.