The 100 strongest radio point sources in the field of the Large Magellanic Cloud at 1.4 GHz

Abstract

We present the 100 strongest 1.4 GHz point sources from a new mosaic image in the direction of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). The observations making up the mosaic were made using Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) over a ten year period and were combined with Parkes single dish data at 1.4 GHz to complete the image for short spacing. An initial list of co-identifications within 1000 at 0.843, 4.8 and 8.6 GHz consisted of 2682 sources. Elimination of extended objects and artifact noise allowed the creation of a refined list containing 1988 point sources. Most of these are presumed to be background objects seen through the LMC; a small portion may represent compact H ii regions, young SNRs and radio planetary nebulae. For the 1988 point sources we find a preliminary average spectral index (?) of -0.53 and present a 1.4 GHz image showing source location in the direction of the LMC.