A Sensitive 1.5 GHz Radio Survey around the North Ecliptic Pole

A 29.3 deg^2^ region surrounding the north ecliptic pole (NEP; α = 18^h^00^m^, δ = +66^deg^30') was mapped with the Very Large Array at 1.5 GHz to support the deepest portion of the ROSAT all-sky soft X-ray survey. The resulting VLA-NEP survey catalog contains 2435 radio sources with flux densities in the range of 0.3- 1000 mJy, including over 200 fainter than 1 mJy. The 28 fields of the inner 1.5^deg^ have noise levels σ ~ 60 microJy, and the 85 fields centered between 1.5^deg^ and 3.0^deg^ from the NEP have σ ~ 120 microJy. The typical spatial resolution is 20" HPBW, and most positions are accurate to < 2". Approximately 6% of the sources are found to be extended with size > 30". We have compared the VLA-NEP catalog with four other radio catalogs made at lower resolution, as well as with the NASA Extragalactic Database and find counterparts for ~18% of the VLA-NEP objects. The normalized, differential radio source count is in agreement with previous studies. Between 1 and 150 mJy the slope of the log N- log S relation is 0.68 +/- 0.03. The catalog and related tables are available electronically.