Infrared imaging of WENSS radio sources^*

¹ Dipartimento di Astronomia e Scienza dello Spazio, L.go E. Fermi 5, I-50125 Firenze, Italy
² Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri, L.go E. Fermi 5, I-50125 Firenze, Italy

Send offprint request to: D. Villani

Received: 17 September 1997
Accepted: 6 November 1998

Abstract

We have performed deep imaging in the IR J- and K- bands for three sub-samples of radio sources extracted from the Westerbork Northern Sky Survey, a large low-frequency radio survey containing Ultra Steep Spectrum (USS), Gigahertz Peaked Spectrum (GPS) and Flat Spectrum (FS) sources. We present the results of these IR observations, carried out with the ARcetri Near Infrared CAmera (ARNICA) at the Nordic Optical Telescope (NOT), providing photometric and morphologic information on high redshift radio galaxies and quasars. We find that the radio galaxies contained in our sample do not show the pronounced radio/IR alignment claimed for 3CR sources. IR photometric measurements of the gravitational lens system 1600+434 are also presented.