The merits of solar coronal at metric-wavelength (MW) radio have long been recognised (e.g. Pick and Vilmer, 2008). High-fidelity solar radio imaging at these frequencies has however remained challenging. On the one hand, dealing with the small spectral and temporal scales of variation in solar radio emission requires a data product capable of tracking the emission simultaneously across time, frequency and morphology. The Fourier imaging nature of interferometry, on the other hand, severely limits the instrumental ability to gather sufficient information to do this with the required fidelity and resolution. Benefiting from the enormous advances in technology the new generation of instruments, like the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA; Tingay et al. (2013), Bowman et al. (2013)), represent a quantum leap in our ability to gather data suitable for radio solar physics.

At low radio frequencies the solar corona is very dynamic in both spectral and temporal domains. To capture the fine details of this complex dynamics, imaging studies at high temporal and spectral resolution are necessary. The advent of the new instruments like the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA; Tingay et al. 2013, Bowman et al. 2013), is now making this possible.

An improved understanding of the solar corona is crucial for making progress on long-standing problems like coronal heating and the origin of the solar wind. Metrewave radio emissions arise in the coronal regions and form a unique diagnostic probe of this, otherwise hard to study region. The background radio emission at these wavelengths comes from the slowly varying thermal free-free emission and on it are superposed a variety of nonthermal emissions arising from a range of plasma emission processes. The latter are coherent in nature and hence lead to a much larger observational contrast, as compared to that in EUV or X-ray, for emissions involving similar energetics. One of the prevalent hypotheses for explaining coronal heating is based on the presence of an energetically weak population of ‘nanoflares’ (Parker 1988). A necessary requirement for nanoflares based coronal heating to be effective is that their occurrence rate slopes must be <-2 (Hudson 1991). There is hence a lot of interest in studies of weak nonthermal emissions. Existing studies in EUV and X-ray bands have detected ‘microflares’ with slopes >-2 (e.g. Hannah et al. 2011). Some of the weak meterwave emissions detected are, however, believed to correspond to energies in the ‘picoflare’ range (Ramesh et al. 2013). It is hence, very interesting to study weak nonthermal emissions at metric wavelengths.

We present the results of an approximately 6 100 deg2 104–196 MHz radio sky survey performed with the Murchison Widefield Array during instrument commissioning between 2012 September and 2012 December: the MWACS. The data were taken as meridian drift scans with two different 32-antenna sub-arrays that were available during the commissioning period. The survey covers approximately 20.5 h < RA < 8.5 h, − 58° < Dec < −14°over three frequency bands centred on 119, 150 and 180 MHz, with image resolutions of 6–3 arcmin. The catalogue has 3 arcmin angular resolution and a typical noise level of 40 mJy beam− 1, with reduced sensitivity near the field boundaries and bright sources. We describe the data reduction strategy, based upon mosaicked snapshots, flux density calibration, and source-finding method. We present a catalogue of flux density and spectral index measurements for 14 110 sources, extracted from the mosaic, 1 247 of which are sub-components of complexes of sources.

Significant new opportunities for astrophysics and cosmology have been identified at low radio frequencies. The Murchison Widefield Array is the first telescope in the southern hemisphere designed specifically to explore the low-frequency astronomical sky between 80 and 300 MHz with arcminute angular resolution and high survey efficiency. The telescope will enable new advances along four key science themes, including searching for redshifted 21-cm emission from the EoR in the early Universe; Galactic and extragalactic all-sky southern hemisphere surveys; time-domain astrophysics; and solar, heliospheric, and ionospheric science and space weather. The Murchison Widefield Array is located in Western Australia at the site of the planned Square Kilometre Array (SKA) low-band telescope and is the only low-frequency SKA precursor facility. In this paper, we review the performance properties of the Murchison Widefield Array and describe its primary scientific objectives.