A radio continuum study of the Magellanic Clouds

VIII. Discrete sources common to radio and infrared surveys of the Magellanic Clouds

¹ University of Western Sydney, Nepean, P.O. Box 10, Kingswood, NSW 2747, Australia e-mail: M.Filipovic@uws.edu.au; p.jones@nepean.uws.edu.au; g.white@nepean.uws.edu.au
² Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik, Giessenbachstraße, D-85740 Garching, Germany
³ Australia Telescope National Facility, CSIRO, P.O. Box 76, Epping, NSW 2121, Australia e-mail: mfilipovic@atnf.csiro.au; rhaynes@atnf.csiro.au

Send offprint request to: M.D. Filipović

Received: 28 November 1997
Accepted: 24 December 1997

Abstract

We compare Parkes Telescope radio surveys with the IRAS Infrared (IR) surveys of the Magellanic Clouds (MCs). We find 130 discrete sources in common towards the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) with both radio and IR emission. These 130 sources are mainly HII regions (89) and supernova remnants (21). For 12 of the sources we have no identification and eight are background objects. We find 38 sources in common for the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). Most of these sources are intrinsic (31) to the SMC, five sources are previously known background galaxies and two sources remain ambiguous. A flux density comparison of the radio and IR sources shows very good correlation and we note that the strongest sources at both radio and IR frequencies are HII regions. From the radio–IR comparison we propose that some 40 new sources in the LMC and 10 in the SMC are HII regions or SNRs. All these new sources are also identified in optical surveys.