Radio observations of the Hubble Deep Field-South region. II. The 1.4 GHz catalog and source counts

This paper is part of a series describing the results from the Australia Telescope Hubble Deep Field-South (ATHDFS) survey obtained with the Australia Telescope Compact Array. This survey consists of observations at 1.4, 2.5, 5.2, and 8.7 GHz, all centered on the Hubble Deep Field-South. Here we present the first results from the extended observing campaign at 1.4 GHz. A total of 466 sources have been cataloged to a local sensitivity of 5 sigma (11 mu Jy rms). A source extraction technique is developed that (1) successfully excludes spurious sources from the final source catalogs and (2) accounts for the nonuniform noise in our image. A source catalog is presented, and the general properties of the 1.4 GHz image are discussed. We also present source counts derived from our ATHDFS 1.4 GHz catalog. Particular attention is given to ensuring that the counts are corrected for survey incompleteness and systematic effects. Our counts are consistent with other surveys (e.g., the Australia Telescope ESO Slice Project, VIRMOS, and the Phoenix Deep Field), and we find, in common with these surveys, that the HDF-N counts are systematically lower.