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 \times 16 square degrees centered on ( \alpha, \delta ) = ( 5 ^ { h } 27 ^ { m } 20 ^ { s } , -69 \degr 00 \arcmin 00 \arcsec ) for the Large Magellanic Cloud ( LMC ) and 14.7 \times 10 square degrees centered on ( \alpha, \delta ) = ( 1 ^ { h } 02 ^ { m } 40 ^ { s } , -73 \degr 00 \arcmin 00 \arcsec ) 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 .