We have compiled the near infrared Point Source Catalogue (PSC) towards the
Magellanic Clouds (MCs) extracted from the data obtained with the Deep Nea
r Infrared Survey of the Southern Sky DENIS (Epchtein et al. 1997). The cat
alogue covers an area of of 19.87 x 16 square degrees centered on (alpha, d
elta) (5(h)27(m)20(s),- 69 degrees 00'00") for the Large Magellanic Cloud (
LMC) and 14.7 x 10 square degrees centered on (alpha,delta) = (1(h)02(m)40(
s),-73 degrees 00'00'') for the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) at the epoch J
2000. It contains about 1 300 000 sources towards the LMC and 300 000 sourc
es towards the SMC each detected in at least 2 of the 3 photometric bands i
nvolved in the survey (I, J, K-s). 70% of the detected sources are true mem
bers of the Magellanic Clouds, respectively and consist mainly of red giant
s, asymptotic giant branch stars and super-giants. The observations have al
l been made with the same instrument and the data have been calibrated and
reduced uniformly. The catalogue provides a homogeneous set of photometric
data.