A survey of Low Luminosity Compact sources

Based on the FIRST and SDSS catalogues a flux density limited sample of weak Compact Steep Spectrum (CSS) sources with radio luminosity below 10²⁶WHz^–1 at 1.4 GHz has been constructed. Our previous multifrequency observations of CSS sources have shown that low luminosity small-scale objects can be strong candidates for compact faders. This finding supports the idea that some small-size radio sources are short-lived phenomena because of a lack of significant fuelling. They never ‘grow up’ to become FRI or FRII objects. This new sample marks the start of a systematic study of the radio properties and morphologies of the population of low luminosity compact (LLC) objects. An investigation of this new sample should also lead to a better understanding of compact faders. In this paper, the results of the first stage of the new project – the L-band MERLIN observations of 44 low luminosity CSS sources are presented (© 2009 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)