WN-1626- A GIANT RADIO GALAXY FROM THE WENSS SURVEY(5153 )

A Fanaroff-Riley II (FR II) radio source with an angular extension of 18.4 arcmin has been discovered in the Westerbork Northern Sky Survey that is being carried out at 325 MHz. This source is identified with M rk 1498 at z = 0.056, indicating that its projected extension is 1.6 h (50) Mpc, The optical spectrum of Mrk 1498 has the typical emission li nes of a narrow-line radio galaxy; H alpha is the only permitted line that has a faint broad component, The discovery shows that the good se nsitivity of WENSS at low frequencies to low-surface-brightness featur es at scales of a few arcminutes is uniquely suited to provide well-de fined and relatively large samples of giant radio galaxies, The future definition of such samples will be important for our understanding of giant radio galaxies.