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6. EVOLUTION OF THE MICROJANSKY POPULATION

The best fitting slope to the integral source count for the 28 radio sources contained in our complete sample is -1.0 ± 0.2, comparable to that found by Windhorst et al. (1993) and Fomalont et al. (1991) for other microjansky samples. As discussed earlier, redshifts of the microjansky radio sources extend up to two or more, thus in the absence of any evolution, the source count would be expected to rapidly converge. The steepening of the observed count below one millijansky implies an increase in the density and/or luminosity of the source population. However, as reported by Windhorst et al. (1993), below about one microjansky, the count must converge rather rapidly, otherwise the integrated contribution of the weaker sources would distort the microwave background spectrum which is known to be within a part in 104 of a perfect black body. Thus, the space density radio sources which contribute to the microjansky counts appears to peak near redshifts of unity and evolve in much the same manner as strong radio galaxies, optically selected quasars (e.g., Schmidt et al. 1991) or the population of faint starforming galaxies reported by Madau (1997).