Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.3/211901

Title

CANDELS: the Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey

Author(s)

Grogin, Norman A.;  Kocevski, Dale D.;  Faber, S. M.;  Ferguson, Henry C.;  Koekemoer, Anton M.;  Riess, Adam G.;  Acquaviva, Viviana;  Alexander, David M.;  Almaini, Omar;  Ashby, Matthew L. N.;  Barden, Marco;  Bell, Eric F.;  Bournaud, Frederic;  Brown, Thomas M.;  Caputi, Karina I.;  Casertano, Stefano;  Cassata, Paolo;  Castellano, Marco;  Challis, Peter;  Chary, Ranga-Ram;  Cheung, Edmond;  Cirasuolo, Michele;  Conselice, Christopher J.;  Cooray, Asantha Roshan;  Croton, Darren J.;  Daddi, Emanuele;  Dahlen, Tomas;  Dave, Romeel;  de Mello, Duılia F.;  Dekel, Avishai;  Dickinson, Mark;  Dolch, Timothy;  Donley, Jennifer L.;  Dunlop, James S.;  Dutton, Aaron A.;  Elbaz, David;  Fazio, Giovanni G.;  Filippenko, Alexei V.;  Finkelstein, Steven L.;  Fontana, Adriano;  Gardner, Jonathan P.;  Garnavich, Peter M.;  Gawiser, Eric;  Giavalisco, Mauro;  Grazian, Andrea;  Guo, Yicheng;  Hathi, Nimish P.;  Haussler, Boris;  Hopkins, Philip F.;  Huang, Jia-Sheng;  Huang, Kuang-Han;  Jha, Saurabh W.;  Kartaltepe, Jeyhan S.;  Kirshner, Robert P.;  Koo, David C.;  Lai, Kamson;  Lee, Kyoung-Soo;  Li, Weidong;  Lotz, Jennifer M.;  Lucas, Ray A.;  Madau, Piero;  McCarthy, Patrick J.;  McGrath, Elizabeth J.;  McIntosh, Daniel H.;  McLure, Ross J.;  Mobasher, Bahram;  Moustakas, Leonidas A.;  Mozena, Mark;  Nandra, Kirpal;  Newman, Jeffrey A.;  Niemi, Sami-Matias;  Noeske, Kai G.;  Papovich, Casey J.;  Pentericci, Laura;  Pope, Alexandra;  Primack, Joel R.;  Rajan, Abhijith;  Ravindranath, Swara;  Reddy, Naveen A.;  Renzini, Alvio;  Rix, Hans-Walter;  Robaina, Aday R.;  Rodney, Steven A.;  Rosario, David J.;  Rosati, Piero;  Salimbeni, Sara;  Scarlata, Claudia;  Siana, Brian;  Simard, Luc;  Smidt, Joseph;  Somerville, Rachel S.;  Spinrad, Hyron;  Straughn, Amber N.;  Strolger, Louis-Gregory;  Telford, Olivia;  Teplitz, Harry I.;  Trump, Jonathan R.;  van der Wel, Arjen;  Villforth, Carolin;  Wechsler, Risa H.;  Weiner, Benjamin J.;  Wiklind, Tommy;  Wild, Vivienne;  Wilson, Grant;  Wuyts, Stijn;  Yan, Hao-Jing;  Yun, Min S.

Abstract

The Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey (CANDELS) is designed to document the first third of galactic evolution, over the approximate redshift (z) range 8--1.5. It will image >250,000 distant galaxies using three separate cameras on the Hubble Space Telescope, from the mid-ultraviolet to the near-infrared, and will find and measure Type Ia supernovae at z>1.5 to test their accuracy as standardizable candles for cosmology. Five premier multi-wavelength sky regions are selected, each with extensive ancillary data. The use of five widely separated fields mitigates cosmic variance and yields statistically robust and complete samples of galaxies down to a stellar mass of 10^9 M_\odot to z \approx 2, reaching the knee of the ultraviolet luminosity function (UVLF) of galaxies to z \approx 8. The survey covers approximately 800 arcmin^2 and is divided into two parts. The CANDELS/Deep survey (5\sigma\ point-source limit H=27.7 mag) covers \sim 125 arcmin^2 within GOODS-N and GOODS-S. The CANDELS/Wide survey includes GOODS and three additional fields (EGS, COSMOS, and UDS) and covers the full area to a 5\sigma\ point-source limit of H \gtrsim 27.0 mag. Together with the Hubble Ultra Deep Fields, the strategy creates a three-tiered "wedding cake" approach that has proven efficient for extragalactic surveys. Data from the survey are nonproprietary and are useful for a wide variety of science investigations. In this paper, we describe the basic motivations for the survey, the CANDELS team science goals and the resulting observational requirements, the field selection and geometry, and the observing design. The Hubble data processing and products are described in a companion paper.

Publication type

Journal article

Research centre

Swinburne University of Technology. Faculty of Information and Communication Technologies. Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing

Source

Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, Vol. 197, no. 2 (Dec 2011), article no. 35

Publication year

2011

FOR Code(s)

0201 Astronomical and Space Sciences;  0305 Organic Chemistry;  0306 Physical Chemistry (Incl. Structural)

Keyword(s)

Cosmology observations;  High-redshift galaxies

Publisher

Institute of Physics Publishing

ISSN

0067-0049

Publisher URL

http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/0067-0049/197/2/35

Copyright

Copyright © 2011 The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. The American Astronomical Society does not allow institutions to archive either the accepted manuscript or the published version of the article. However, you can find an earlier version of the full text here: http://arxiv.org/abs/1105.3753

Peer reviewed