A Westerbork survey of rich clusters of galaxies. XI - Observations of the Cancer Cluster at 610 MHz

An area of 1.6 deg in radius about the centre of the Cancer Cluster has been surveyed at 610 MHz with the Westerbork telescope. The minimum detectable flux in the full synthesis map obtained is 2.5 mJy (4 r.m.s. noise), which at the distance of 46 Mpc corresponds to P equals 6 x 10 to the 20th W/Hz. Two (E plus SO) galaxies and seven (S plus 1) galaxies belonging to the cluster have been detected, and these are used to construct the Radio Luminosity Function of this cluster. The results for both the ellipticals and the spirals are in agreement with those obtained for galaxies of the same type outside rich clusters. The reasonable statistics achieved in the optical interval Mx varies between -19 and no greater than -18 show that still about 50 percent of the spirals and irregulars have radio power below 6 x 10 to the 20th W/Hz. The peculiar S galaxy Zw 119-55 studied by Tifft et al. (1973) is the strongest radio source in this cluster, P equals 1.3 x 10 to the 22nd W/Hz.