The radio galaxy populations of nearby northern Abell clusters

We report on the use of the NRAO VLA Sky Survey (NVSS) to identify radio ga laxies in 18 nearby Abell clusters. The listings extend from the cores of t he clusters out to radii of 3 h(75)(-1) Mpc, which corresponds to 1.5 Abell radii and approximately 4 orders of magnitude in galaxy density. To create a truly useful catalog, we have collected optical spectra for nearly all o f the galaxies lacking public velocity measurements. Consequently, we are a ble to discriminate between those radio galaxies seen in projection on the cluster and those that are in actuality cluster members. The resulting cata log consists of 329 cluster radio galaxies plus 138 galaxies deemed foregro und or background objects, and new velocity measurements are reported for 2 73 of these radio galaxies. The motivation for the catalog is the study of galaxy evolution in the cluster environment. The radio luminosity function is a powerful tool in the identification of active galaxies, as it is domin ated by star-forming galaxies at intermediate luminosities and active galac tic nuclei (AGNs) at higher luminosities. The flux limit of the NVSS allows us to identify AGNs and star-forming galaxies down to star formation rates less than 1 M-. yr(-1). This sensitivity, coupled with the all-sky nature of the NVSS, allows us to produce a catalog of considerable depth and bread th. In addition to these data, we report detected infrared fluxes and upper limits obtained from IRAS data. It is hoped that this database will prove useful in a number of potential studies of the effect of environment on gal axy evolution.