The MWA Long Baseline Epoch of Reionisation Survey: I. Improved Source
  Catalogue for the EoR 0 field
  One of the principal systematic constraints on the Epoch of Reionisation
(EoR) experiment is the accuracy of the foreground calibration model. Recent
results have shown that highly accurate models of extended foreground sources,
and including models for sources in both the primary beam and its sidelobes,
are necessary for reducing foreground power. To improve the accuracy of the
source models for the EoR fields observed by the Murchison Widefield Array
(MWA), we conducted the MWA Long Baseline Epoch of Reionisation Survey (LoBES).
This survey consists of multi-frequency observations of the main MWA EoR fields
and their eight neighbouring fields using the MWA Phase II extended array. We
present the results of the first half of this survey centred on the MWA EoR0
observing field (centred at RA(J2000) 0 h, Dec(J2000) -27 deg). This half of
the survey covers an area of 3069 degrees$^2$, with an average rms of 2.1 mJy
beam$^{-1}$. The resulting catalogue contains a total of 80824 sources, with 16
separate spectral measurements between 100 and 230 MHz, and spectral modelling
for 78$\%$ of these sources. Over this region we estimate that the catalogue is
90$\%$ complete at 32 mJy, and 70$\%$ complete at 10.5~mJy. The overall
normalised source counts are found to be in good agreement with previous
low-frequency surveys at similar sensitivities. Testing the performance of the
new source models we measure lower residual rms values for peeled sources,
particularly for extended sources, in a set of MWA Phase I data. The
2-dimensional power spectrum of these data residuals also show improvement on
small angular scales -- consistent with the better angular resolution of the
LoBES catalogue. It is clear that the LoBES sky models improve upon the current
sky model used by the Australian MWA EoR group for the EoR0 field.
