1-arcsecond imaging of the ELAIS-N1 field at 144MHz using the LoTSS survey with the international LOFAR telescope

We present the first wide area (2.5 × 2.5 deg2) LOFAR high band antenna image at a resolution of 1.2″ × 2″ with a median noise of ≈80 µJy beam−1. It was made from an 8-hour International LOFAR Telescope (ILT) observation of the ELAIS-N1 field at frequencies ranging from 120 to 168 MHz with the most up-to-date ILT imaging methods. This intermediate resolution falls between the highest possible resolution (0.3″) achievable by using all ILT baselines and the standard 6-arcsec resolution in the LOFAR Two-meter Sky Survey (LoTSS) image products utilising the LOFAR Dutch baselines only. This is the first demonstration of the feasibility of imaging using the ILT at a resolution of ~1″, which provides unique information on source morphology at scales that fall below the surface brightness limits at higher resolutions. The total calibration and imaging computational time is approximately 52 000 core hours, which is nearly five times more than required to produce a 6″ resolution image. We also present a radio source catalogue containing 2263 sources detected over the 2.5 × 2.5 deg2 image of the ELAIS-N1 field, with a peak intensity threshold of 5.5σ. The catalogue has been cross-matched with the LoTSS deep ELAIS-N1 field radio catalogue, and its flux density and positional accuracy have been investigated and corrected accordingly. We find that ~80% of sources that we expect to be detectable based on their peak brightness in the LoTSS 6″ resolution image are detected in this image, which is approximately a factor of two higher than for 0.3″ resolution imaging in the Lockman Hole, implying there is a wealth of information on these intermediate scales.