3 Results and discussion

The true polarization parameters in the sky reference frame for 154 sources are presented in Table 4. Columns (1) and (2) give the right ascension - declination designations and an alternative catalogue number. Columns (3) and (4) give their position in right ascension and declination (1950) while Cols. (5) and (6) provide their galactic position in degrees. Column (8) through (13) display the flux and its error, the degree of polarization and its error, and the position angle of the plane of polarization and its errors, respectively. Where the error in m exceeds the value of m itself, no position angle is quoted.

Figure 1a shows the distribution of the linear polarization values for all sources measured. The results were generated using the polarization data in Table 4, but corrected for noise bias mentioned in the preceeding section. The noise bias is greatest when the polarized flux signal-to-noise $\leq 3$. Since all sources, except for one, have flux densities greater than 100 mJy, this effect is only seen when $m_{6.3}\leq 1\%$. Considering the bin size used in the figure, very little change should occur between the corrected and uncorrected m_6.3 values. In fact, when we apply the Wardle-Kronberg estimator (Wardle & Kronberg 1974; Simmons & Stewart 1985), the only difference in the binned data is that the noise corrections displaced one value from the $9-10\%$ bin to the $8-9\%$ bin in Fig. 1.

For those sources with known redshift, we compare in Figs. 1b and c the distribution of linear polarization values for sources above and below z=0.5.

  

Figure 1: a) The distribution of m6.3 for all 154 radio galaxies. b) The distribution of m6.3 for the 71 sources with a known redshift less than 0.5. c) The distribution of m6.3 for the 26 sources with a known redshift greater than 0.5.

A full analysis of the Faraday rotation properties of these sources awaits the completion of measurments at other wavelengths and will be presented elsewhere.

  

Table 3: Polarization properties of 0010+40 at 6.3 cm

  

Table 4: Polarization properties at 6.3 cm

 

Table 4: continued

 

Table 4: continued

Acknowledgements

E.L.H.Z. and P.P.K. thank the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada for support of this work. We thank Gabi Breuer and W. Fußhöller for their assistance with the manuscript.