Predicting the Number of Radio Sources seen by both VLASS and LSST
Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: Radio surveys typically sample extragalactic sources in higher redshift regimes than is typical for optical surveys, resulting in many radio sources not having a detected optical counterpart. Over the next decade the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) will be performing the deepest (i < 26.4 mag) wide-area optical survey to date increasing the fraction of radio sources for which we have optical data. In this Research Note we use the Hyper Suprime-Cam survey to analyze how the fraction of radio sources in the Very Large Array Sky Survey (VLASS) with optical detections varies as a function of i-band magnitude and extrapolate to predict the number of optical counterparts we expect LSST to detect. Assuming a final VLASS point source depth of S 3 GHz ≲ 350 μJy, we expect LSST to identify optical counterparts to ∼106 radio sources in VLASS.
Source: Research Notes of the AAS
Authors: Alex Tellez, Yjan Gordon, Keith Bechtol
Institution: University of Wisconsin–Madison
Language: English
Subfield: Astronomy and Astrophysics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4402634145