The DENIS point source catalogue towards the magellanic clouds)

We have compiled the near infrared Point Source Catalogue (PSC) towards the Magellanic Clouds (MCs) extracted from the data obtained with the Deep Near Infrared Survey of the Southern Sky DENIS (Epchtein et al. 1997). The catalogue covers an area of of 19.87 x 16 square degrees centered on (alpha, delta) (5(h)27(m)20(s),- 69 degrees 00'00) for the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) and 14.7 x 10 square degrees centered on (alpha,delta) = (1(h)02(m)40(s),-73 degrees 00'00'') for the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) at the epoch J2000. It contains about 1 300 000 sources towards the LMC and 300 000 sources towards the SMC each detected in at least 2 of the 3 photometric bands involved in the survey (I, J, K(s)). 70% of the detected sources are true members of the Magellanic Clouds, respectively and consist mainly of red giants, asymptotic giant branch stars and super-giants. The observations have all been made with the same instrument and the data have been calibrated and reduced uniformly. The catalogue provides a homogeneous set of photometric data.