Counting individual galaxies from deep 24-μm Spitzer surveys

We address the question of how to deal with confusion-limited surveys in the mid-infrared (MIR) domain by using information from shorter-wavelength observations over the same sky regions. Such information, once applied to apparently extended MIR sources, which are indeed 'blends' of two or more different sources, allow us to disentangle the single counterparts and to split the measured flux density into different components. We present the application of this method to the 24-mu m Spitzer archival data in the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey ELAIS-N1 (GOODS EN1) test field, where apparently extended, 'blended' sources constitute about 20 per cent of a reliable sample of 983 sources detected above the 5 sigma threshold down to 40 mu Jy. As a shorter-wavelength data set, we have considered the public Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) images and catalogues of the same field. We show that the 24-mu m sample is almost unbiased down to similar to 40 mu Jy and the careful application of the deblending procedure does not require any statistical completeness correction (at least at the flux level considered). This is probed by direct comparison of our results with results in the literature that analysed the same data set through extensive Monte Carlo simulations. The extrapolation of the source counts down to fainter fluxes suggests that our 24-mu m sample is able to resolve similar to 62 percent of the cosmic background down to a flux level of 38 mu Jy.