VLA 1.4GHz observations of the GOODS-North Field: Data Reduction and
  Analysis
  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 ~1.7" and an r.m.s. noise level of ~3.9uJy/bm
near its center and ~8uJy/bm at 15', from phase center. We have cataloged 1,230
discrete radio emitters, within a 40' x 40' region, above a 5-sigma detection
threshold of ~20uJy 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 100uJy with a median source
diameter of ~1.2". This adds to the evidence presented by Owen & Morrison
(2008) that the natural confusion limit may lie near ~1uJy. 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 1uJy else the cosmic microwave background temperature would
increase above 2.7K at 1.4 GHz.
