A&A Supplement series, Vol. 122, April I 1997, 1-10
Received 6 February; accepted 26 June, 1996
M.N. Sevenster
, J.M. Chapman
, H.J. Habing
,
N.E.B. Killeen
- M. Lindqvist
Send offprint request: M.N. Sevenster
Sterrewacht Leiden, P.O. Box 9513, 2300 RA Leiden,
The Netherlands
Anglo Australian Observatory, P.O.Box 296, Epping 2121
NSW, Australia
Australia Telescope National Facility, P.O.Box 76, Epping
2121 NSW, Australia
We present observations of the region between 
and
in the OH 1612.231 MHz line, taken in 1993 October and
November with the Australia Telescope Compact
Array.
The region was systematically searched for OH/IR stars and was
covered completely with 539 pointing centres separated by 30
.
The size of the dataset calls for a special reduction technique
that is fast, reliable and minimizes the output (positions
and velocities of possible stars only).
Having developed such a reduction method we found
307 OH masing objects, 145 of which are new detections.
Out of these, 245 have a standard double-peaked
spectral profile, 58 a single-peaked profile
and 4 have nonstandard or irregular profiles.
In this article we analyse the data statistically and give classifications
and identifications with known sources where possible.
The astrophysical, kinematical, morphological and dynamical
properties of subsets of the data will be addressed in future articles.
These observations are part of a larger survey, covering
and 
, with the Australia
Telescope Compact Array and the Very Large Array.
keywords: techniques: image processing -- surveys -- stars: AGB and post-AGB -- galaxy: center -- radio lines: stars -- galaxy i stellar content