The MeerKAT 1.3 GHz survey of the Large Magellanic Cloud: Point Source Catalogue

TL;DR

This paper presents a highly sensitive and extensive point source catalogue of the Large Magellanic Cloud using MeerKAT radio observations, significantly expanding the known source population and improving data quality over previous surveys.

Contribution

The first comprehensive MeerKAT 1.3 GHz point source catalogue of the LMC, with enhanced sensitivity and resolution, surpassing previous ASKAP survey results.

Findings

Catalogue contains 339,128 sources, a sixfold increase over ASKAP.

Lower noise level of 11 microJy/beam improves detection of faint sources.

Enhanced positional accuracy and spectral analysis capabilities.

Abstract

We present a point source catalogue of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) using observations from the MeerKAT radio telescope across a broad frequency band centred at 1295 MHz (L-band) with 12 sub-bands and an angular resolution of 8 arcsec x 8 arcsec. We investigate the source flux density distribution and spectral indices and compare these results with previous radio catalogues, such as surveys conducted with the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) at 888 MHz. This new MeerKAT survey reaches a lower average noise level of 11 microJy beam^-1, compared with the previous ASKAP level of 58 microJy beam^-1. The higher sensitivity and resolution enable the detection of a significantly larger number of faint sources. The catalogue contains 339,128 point sources, representing a substantial increase compared with the 54,612 sources detected in the ASKAP survey. This catalogue provides improved insight into the source population distribution, spectral properties, positional accuracy, and the overall improvement in source recovery and survey depth in the LMC region.