We describe deep , new , wide-field radio continuum observations of the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey – North ( GOODS-N ) field .
The resulting map has a synthesized beamsize of \sim 1.7″ and an r.m.s .
noise level of \sim 3.9 \mu Jy beam ^ { -1 } near its center and \sim 8 \mu Jy beam ^ { -1 } at 15′ from phase center .
We have cataloged 1,230 discrete radio emitters , within a 40′ \times 40′region , above a 5- \sigma detection threshold of \sim 20 \mu Jy at the field center .
New techniques , pioneered by Owen & Morrison ( 2008 ) , have enabled us to achieve a dynamic range of 6800:1 in a field that has significantly strong confusing sources .
We compare the 1.4-GHz ( 20-cm ) source counts with those from other published radio surveys .
Our differential counts are nearly Euclidean below 100 \mu Jy with a median source diameter of \sim 1.2″ .
This adds to the evidence presented by Owen & Morrison ( 2008 ) that the natural confusion limit may lie near 1 \mu Jy .
If the Euclidean slope of the counts continues down to the natural confusion limit as an extrapolation of our log N - log S , this indicates that the cutoff must be fairly sharp below 1 \mu Jy else the cosmic microwave background temperature would increase above 2.7K at 1.4 GHz .