MIGHTEE: multi-wavelength counterparts in the COSMOS field

Whittam, I.H.; Prescott, M.; Hale, C.L.; Jarvis, M .J.; Heywood, I.; An, Fangxia; Glowacki, M.; Maddox, N.; Marchetti, L.; Morabito, Leah; Adams, N.J.; Bowler, R.A.A.; Hatfield, P.W.; Varadaraj, R.G.; Collier, J.; Frank, B.; Taylor, A.R.; Santos, M.G.; Vaccari, M.; Afonso, J.; Ao, Y.; Delhaize, J.; Knowles, K.; Kolwa, S.; Randriamampandry, S.M.; Randriamanakoto, Z.; Smirnov, O.; Smith, D.J.B.; White, S.V.

Abstract

In this paper we combine the Early Science radio continuum data from the MeerKAT International GHz Tiered Extragalactic Exploration (MIGHTEE) Survey, with optical and near-infrared data and release the cross-matched catalogues. The radio data used in this work covers 0.86 deg2 of the COSMOS field, reaches a thermal noise of 1.7 μJy/beam and contains 6102 radio components. We visually inspect and cross-match the radio sample with optical and near-infrared data from the Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) and UltraVISTA surveys. This allows the properties of active galactic nuclei and star-forming populations of galaxies to be probed out to z≈5. Additionally, we use the likelihood ratio method to automatically cross-match the radio and optical catalogues and compare this to the visually cross-matched catalogue. We find that 94 per cent of our radio source catalogue can be matched with this method, with a reliability of 95 per cent. We proceed to show that visual classification will still remain an essential process for the cross-matching of complex and extended radio sources. In the near future, the MIGHTEE survey will be expanded in area to cover a total of ∼20~deg2; thus the combination of automated and visual identification will be critical. We compare redshift distribution of SFG and AGN to the SKADS and T-RECS simulations and find more AGN than predicted at z∼1.

Citation

Whittam, I., Prescott, M., Hale, C., Jarvis, M. .., Heywood, I., An, F., …White, S. (2024). MIGHTEE: multi-wavelength counterparts in the COSMOS field. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 527(2), 3231-3245. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stad3307

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Oct 30, 2023
• Online Publication Date: Oct 31, 2023
• Publication Date: 2024-01
• Deposit Date: Nov 2, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 24, 2024
• Journal: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
• Print ISSN: 0035-8711
• Publisher: Royal Astronomical Society
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 527
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 3231-3245
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stad3307
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1874230
• Publisher URL: https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stad3307
• Additional Information: A correction has been published: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 528, Issue 2, February 2024, Page 1171, https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stae024