A first glimpse at the MeerKAT DEEP2 field at S-band
Camilo, F.; Kramer, M.; Menten, K.; Deane, R. P.; Klöckner, H. -R.; Mao, S. A.; Kasemann, C.; Wucknitz, O.; Buchner, S.; Rugel, M. R.; Ranchod, S.; Legodi, L. S.; Wagenveld, J. D.; Wieching, G.; Sridhar, S. S.; Barr, E.; Damas-Segovia, A.; Rammala, I.
Germany, South Africa, United Kingdom, United States
Abstract
We present the first wide-field extragalactic continuum catalogue with the MeerKAT S-band (2.5 GHz), of the radio-selected DEEP2 field. The combined image over the S1 (1.96-2.84 GHz) and S4 (2.62-3.50 GHz) sub-bands has an angular resolution of 6.8 arcsec $\times$ 3.6 arcsec (4.0 arcsec $\times$ 2.4 arcsec) at a robust weighting of $R = 0.3$ ($R=-0.5$) and a sensitivity of 4.7 (7.5) µJy beam$^{-1}$ with an on-source integration time of 70 min and a minimum of 52 of the 64 antennas, for respective observations. We present the differential source counts for this field, as well as a morphological comparison of resolved sources between S-band and archival MeerKAT L-band images. We find consistent source counts with the literature and provide spectral indices fitted over a combined frequency range of 1.8 GHz. These observations provide an important first demonstration of the capabilities of MeerKAT S-band imaging with relatively short integration times, as well as a comparison with existing S-band surveys, highlighting the rich scientific potential with future MeerKAT S-band surveys.