FRICAT: A FIRST catalog of FR I radio galaxies

We built a catalog of 219 FR I radio galaxies (FR Is), called FRICAT, selected from a published sample and obtained by combining observations from the NVSS, FIRST, and SDSS surveys. We included in the catalog the sources with an edge-darkened radio morphology, redshift ≤ 0.15, and extending (at the sensitivity of the FIRST images) to a radius r larger than 30 kpc from the center of the host. We also selected an additional sample (sFRICAT) of 14 smaller (10 < r < 30 kpc) FR Is, limiting to z < 0.05. The hosts of the FRICAT sources are all luminous (-21 ≳ M_r ≳ -24), red early-type galaxies with black hole masses in the range 10⁸ ≲ M_BH ≲ 3 × 10⁹M_⊙; the spectroscopic classification based on the optical emission line ratios indicates that they are all low excitation galaxies. Sources in the FRICAT are then indistinguishable from the FR Is belonging to the Third Cambridge Catalogue of Radio Sources (3C) on the basis of their optical properties. Conversely, while the 3C-FR Is show a strong positive trend between radio and [O III] emission line luminosity, these two quantities are unrelated in the FRICAT sources; at a given line luminosity, they show radio luminosities spanning about two orders of magnitude and extending to much lower ratios between radio and line power than 3C-FR Is. Our main conclusion is that the 3C-FR Is just represent the tip of the iceberg of a much larger and diverse population of FR Is.