Astron. Astrophys. Suppl. Ser. 146, 41-55

The ATESP radio survey

II. The source catalogue

I. Prandoni ^1,2 - L. Gregorini ^3,2 - P. Parma ² - H.R. de Ruiter ^4,2 - G. Vettolani ² - M.H. Wieringa ⁵ - R.D. Ekers ⁵

Send offprint request: I. Prandoni

Correspondence to: prandoni@ira.bo.cnr.it

1 - Dipartimento di Astronomia, Università di Bologna, via Ranzani 1, I-40126 Bologna, Italy
2 - Istituto di Radioastronomia, CNR, ViaGobetti 101, I-40129 Bologna, Italy
3 - Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Bologna, Via Irnerio 46, I-40126 Bologna, Italy
4 - Osservatorio Astronomico di Bologna, Via Ranzani 1, I-40126 Bologna, Italy
5 - Australia Telescope National Facility, CSIRO, PO Box 76, Epping, NSW2121, Australia

Received March 8; accepted June 23, 2000

Abstract:

This paper is part of a series reporting the results of the Australia Telescope ESO Slice Project (ATESP) radio survey obtained at 1400 MHz with the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) over the region covered by the ESO Slice Project (ESP) galaxy redshift survey. The survey consists of 16 radio mosaics with $\sim 8\hbox{$^{\prime\prime}$ }\times 14\hbox{$^{\prime\prime}$ }$resolution and uniform sensitivity ($1 \sigma$ noise level $\sim$79 $\mu$Jy) over the whole area of the ESP redshift survey ($\sim 26$ sq. degrees at $\delta \sim -40\hbox{$^\circ$ }$).

Here we present the catalogue derived from the ATESP survey. We detected 2960 distinct radio sources down to a flux density limit of $\sim 0.5$ mJy ($6\sigma$), 1402 being sub-mJy sources. We describe in detail the procedure followed for the source extraction and parameterization. The internal accuracy of the source parameters was tested with Monte Carlo simulations and possible systematic effects (e.g. bandwidth smearing) have been quantified.

Key words: surveys -- radio continuum: galaxies -- catalogs