THE SPITZER DEEP, WIDE-FIELD SURVEY

doi:10.1088/0004-637X/701/1/428

THE SPITZER DEEP, WIDE-FIELD SURVEY

M. L. N. Ashby et al 2009 ApJ 701 428-453 doi: 10.1088/0004-637X/701/1/428

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M. L. N. Ashby¹, D. Stern², M. Brodwin^1,22, R. Griffith², P. Eisenhardt², S. Kozłowski³, C. S. Kochanek^3,4, J. J. Bock⁵, C. Borys⁵, K. Brand⁶, M. J. I. Brown⁷, R. Cool⁸, A. Cooray⁹, S. Croft¹⁰, A. Dey¹¹, D. Eisenstein¹², A. H. Gonzalez¹³, V. Gorjian², N. A. Grogin⁶, R. J. Ivison^14,15, J. Jacob², B. T. Jannuzi¹¹, A. Mainzer², L. A. Moustakas², H. J. A. Röttgering¹⁶, N. Seymour¹⁷, H. A. Smith¹, S. A. Stanford¹⁸, J. R. Stauffer¹⁹, I. Sullivan⁶, W. van Breugel²⁰, S. P. Willner¹ and E. L. Wright²¹
¹ Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden St., Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
² Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91109, USA
³ Department of Astronomy, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA
⁴ The Center for Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA
⁵ California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA
⁶ Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
⁷ School of Physics, Monash University, Clayton 3800, Victoria, Australia
⁸ Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA
⁹ University of California, Irvine, CA 92697, USA
¹⁰ University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
¹¹ NOAO, 950 N. Cherry Ave., Tucson, AZ 85719, USA
¹² Steward Observatory, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA
¹³ Department of Astronomy, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA
¹⁴ UK Astronomy Technology Centre, Royal Observatory, Blackford Hill, Edinburgh EH9 3HJ, UK
¹⁵ Institute for Astronomy, University of Edinburgh, Blackford Hill, Edinburgh EH9 3HJ, UK
¹⁶ Leiden Observatory, Leiden University, P.O. Box 9513, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands
¹⁷ Mullard Space Science Laboratory, University College London, Holmbury St. Mary, Dorking, Surrey RH5 6NT, UK
¹⁸ University of California, Davis, CA 95616, USA
¹⁹ Spitzer Science Center, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA
²⁰ University of California, Merced, CA 95344, USA
²¹ University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1562, USA
²² W. M. Keck Postdoctoral Fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
E-mail: mashby@cfa.harvard.edu

ABSTRACT. The Spitzer Deep, Wide-Field Survey (SDWFS) is a four-epoch infrared survey of 10 deg² in the Boötes field of the NOAO Deep Wide-Field Survey using the IRAC instrument on the Spitzer Space Telescope. SDWFS, a Spitzer Cycle 4 Legacy project, occupies a unique position in the area-depth survey space defined by other Spitzer surveys. The four epochs that make up SDWFS permit—for the first time—the selection of infrared-variable and high proper motion objects over a wide field on timescales of years. Because of its large survey volume, SDWFS is sensitive to galaxies out to z ~ 3 with relatively little impact from cosmic variance for all but the richest systems. The SDWFS data sets will thus be especially useful for characterizing galaxy evolution beyond z ~ 1.5. This paper explains the SDWFS observing strategy and data processing, presents the SDWFS mosaics and source catalogs, and discusses some early scientific findings. The publicly released, full-depth catalogs contain 6.78, 5.23, 1.20, and 0.96 × 10⁵ distinct sources detected to the average 5σ, 4''-diameter, aperture-corrected limits of 19.77, 18.83, 16.50, and 15.82 Vega mag at 3.6, 4.5, 5.8, and 8.0 μm, respectively. The SDWFS number counts and color-color distribution are consistent with other, earlier Spitzer surveys. At the 6 minute integration time of the SDWFS IRAC imaging, >50% of isolated Faint Images of the Radio Sky at Twenty cm radio sources and >80% of on-axis XBoötes sources are detected out to 8.0 μm. Finally, we present the four highest proper motion IRAC-selected sources identified from the multi-epoch imaging, two of which are likely field brown dwarfs of mid-T spectral class.

Key words: infrared: galaxies; infrared: stars; surveys

Print publication: Issue 1 (2009 August 10)
Received 2009 February 3, accepted for publication 2009 June 1
Published 2009 July 23

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