S-COSMOS: The Spitzer Legacy Survey of the Hubble Space Telescope ACS 2 deg^2 COSMOS Field I: Survey Strategy and First Analysis

Creators: Sanders, D. B.; Salvato, M.; Aussel, H.; Ilbert, O.; Scoville, N.; Surace, J. A.; Frayer, D.; Sheth, K.; Helou, G.; Brooke, T.; Bhattacharya, B.; Yan, L.; Kartaltepe, J. S.; Barnes, J. E.; Blain, A. W.; Calzetti, D.; Capak, P.; Carilli, C.; Carollo, C. M.; Comastri, A.; Daddi, E.; Ellis, R. S.; Elvis, M.; Fall, S. M.; Franceschini, A.; Giavalisco, M.; Hasinger, G.; Impey, C.; Koekemoer, A.; Le Fèvre, O.; Lilly, S.; Liu, M. C.; McCracken, H. J.; Mobasher, B.; Renzini, A.; Rich, M.; Schinnerer, E.; Shopbell, P. L.; Taniguchi, Y.; Thompson, D. J.; Urry, C. M.; Williams, J. P.

Abstract

The COSMOS Spitzer survey (S-COSMOS) is a Legacy program (Cycles 2+3) designed to carry out a uniform deep survey of the full 2 deg^2 COSMOS field in all seven Spitzer bands (3.6, 4.5, 5.6, 8.0, 24.0, 70.0, and 160.0 μm). This paper describes the survey parameters, mapping strategy, data reduction procedures, achieved sensitivities to date, and the complete data set for future reference. We show that the observed infrared backgrounds in the S-COSMOS field are within 10% of the predicted background levels. The fluctuations in the background at 24 μm have been measured and do not show any significant contribution from cirrus, as expected. In addition, we report on the number of asteroid detections in the low Galactic latitude COSMOS field. We use the Cycle 2 S-COSMOS data to determine preliminary number counts, and compare our results with those from previous Spitzer Legacy surveys (e.g., SWIRE, GOODS). The results from this "first analysis" confirm that the S-COSMOS survey will have sufficient sensitivity with IRAC to detect ~L^* disks and spheroids out to z ≳ 3, and with MIPS to detect ultraluminous starbursts and AGNs out to z ~ 3 at 24 μm and out to z ~ 1.5-2 at 70 and 160 μm.

Additional Information

© 2007 American Astronomical Society. Print publication: Issue 1 (2007 September); received 2006 August 28; accepted for publication 2007 January 9. This work is based on observations made with the Spitzer Space Telescope, which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), California Institute of Technology under NASA contract 1407. Support for this work was provided by NASA through contract 1278386 issued by the JPL. It is a pleasure to acknowledge the hospitality provided by the Aspen Center for Physics where the majority of this paper was written. Additional information on the S-COSMOS Legacy Survey is available from the main COSMOSWeb site at http://www.astro.caltech.edu/cosmos. It is a pleasure to acknowledge the excellent services provided by the NASA IPAC/IRSA staff (Anastasia Laity, Anastasia Alexov, Bruce Berriman, and John Good) in providing online archive and server capabilities for the COSMOS data sets. We thank Guilaine Lagache for useful comments on power spectra measurements. We would also like to thank the referee for comments and suggestions which helped clarify our presentation. Facilities: HST (ACS), Spitzer (IRAC), Spitzer (MIPS)

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