The 6C** sample of steep-spectrum radio sources: I - Radio data, near-infrared imaging and optical spectroscopy

Abstract

We present basic observational data on the 6C** sample. This is a new sample of radio sources drawn from the 151MHz 6C survey, which was filtered with radio criteria chosen to optimize the chances of finding radio galaxies at z > 4. The filtering criteria are a steep-spectral index and a small angular size. The final sample consists of 68 sources from a region of sky covering 0.421 sr. We present VLA radio maps, and the results of K-band imaging and optical spectroscopy.