THE NRAO VLA SKY SURVEY

The NRAO VLA Sky Survey (NVSS) covers the sky north of J2000.0 delta = -40 degrees (82% of the celestial sphere) at 1.4 GHz. The principal d ata products are (1) a set of 2326 4 degrees x 4 degrees continuum ''c ubes'' with three planes containing Stokes I, Q, and U images plus (2) a catalog of almost 2 x 10(6) discrete sources stronger than S approx imate to 2.5 mJy. The images all have theta = 45 '' FWHM resolution an d nearly uniform sensitivity. Their rms brightness fluctuations are si gma approximate to 0.45 mJy beam(-1) approximate to 0.14 K (Stokes I) and sigma approximate to 0.29 mJy beam(-1) approximate to 0.09 K (Stok es Q and U). The rms uncertainties in right ascension and declination vary from less than or similar to 1 '' for the N approximate to 4 x 10 (5) sources stronger than 15 mJy to 7 '' at the survey limit. The NVSS was made as a service to the astronomical community. All data product s, user software, and updates are being released via the World Wide We b as soon as they are produced and verified.