A 4.8 and 8.6 GHz survey of the Large Magellanic Cloud. I. The images

Detailed 4.8 and 8.6 GHz radio images of the entire Large Magellanic Cloud with half-power beamwidths of 33" at 4.8 GHz and 20" at 8.6 GHz have been obtained using the Australia Telescope Compact Array. A total of 7085 mosaic positions were used to cover an area of 6degrees on a side. Full polarimetric observations were made. These images have sufficient spatial resolution (similar to8 and 5 pc, respectively) and sensitivity (3 sigma of 1 mJy beam(-1)) to identify most of the individual supernova remnants and H it regions and also, in combination with available data from the Parkes 64 ut telescope, the structure of the smooth emission in that galaxy. In addition, limited data using the sixth antenna at 4.5-6 km baselines are available to distinguish bright point sources (<3" and 2", respectively) and to help estimate sizes of individual sources smaller than the resolution of the full survey. The resulting database will be valuable for statistical studies and comparisons with X-ray, optical, and infrared surveys of the LMC with similar resolution.