A Neutral Hydrogen Survey of the Large Magellanic Cloud: Aperture Synthesis and Multibeam Data Combined

Recent H i surveys of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) with the Australia Telescope Compact Array (Kim et al. 1998) and the Parkes multibeam receiver (Staveley-Smith et al. 2003) have focussed, respectively, on the small-scale (< 20) structure of the interstellar medium (ISM) and the large-scale (> 1) structure of the galaxy. Using a Fourier-plane technique, we have merged both data sets providing an accurate set of images of the LMC sensitive to structure on scales of 15 pc (for an LMC distance of 50 kpc) upwards. The spatial dynamic range (2.8 orders of magnitude), velocity resolution (1.649 km s), brightness temperature sensitivity (2.4 K) and column density sensitivity (8.9× 10 cm per 1.649 km s channel) allow for the studies of phenomena ranging from the galaxy-wide interaction of the LMC with its close neighbours to the small-scale injection of energy from supernovae and stellar associations into the ISM of the LMC. This paper presents the merged data and the size spectrum of H i clouds which is similar to the typical size spectrum of the holes and shells in the H i distribution. Subject headings: galaxies: individual (Large Magellanic Cloud) — galaxies: ISM — ISM: neutral hydrogen — Magellanic Clouds — radio lines: galaxies University of Massachusetts, Astronomy Department, 710 N. Pleasant St., Amherst, MA 01003; email: [email protected] Australia Telescope National Facility, 76 Epping, NSW 2121, Australia; email:[email protected],[email protected] Mount Stromlo and Siding Spring Observatories, PO Box, Canberra, ACT2611, Australia; email:[email protected]; [email protected] Korea Astronomy Observatory, Taeduk Radio Astronomy Observatory, Whaam-dong 61-1, Yusong-gu, Taejon, 305-348, Korea; email:[email protected] Astronomy Department, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1002 West Green st., IL61801; email:[email protected]