Optical spectra of southern Molonglo radio sources - I.

Summary. We present details of the optical spectra of 22 QSOs and emission- line galaxies identified with southern Molonglo radio sources. Eighteen of these are drawn from a complete sample of identifications for radio sources between declinations -15 and 23O and with 408-MHz flux densities 0.95 Jy; further results will be published in subsequent papers. The remaining four come from a subsidiary programme to confirm identifications for strong radio sources south of 23 . The spectra were obtained with the image-dissector scanner on the 3.9-m Anglo-Australian Telescope. Analysis of the spectra has been aimed at extracting as much quantitative information as possible and several interesting individual objects are discussed.