The Spitzer South Pole Telescope Deep Field: Survey Design and Infrared Array Camera Catalogs

• Published in: The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series
• Main Authors: Ashby, M., Stanford, S., Brodwin, M., Gonzalez, A., Martinez-Manso, J., Bartlett, J., Benson, B., Bleem, L., Crawford, T., Dey, A., Dressler, A., Eisenhardt, P., Galametz, A., Jannuzi, B., Marrone, D., Mei, S., Muzzin, A., Pacaud, F., Pierre, M., Stern, D., Vieira, J.
• Other Authors: DLO Winand Staring Centre, Departamento de Biologia Celular, Facultad de Biologia, Universidad Complutense de Madrid = Complutense University of Madrid Madrid (UCM), AstroParticule et Cosmologie (APC (UMR_7164)), Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA)-Institut National de Physique Nucléaire et de Physique des Particules du CNRS (IN2P3)-Observatoire de Paris, Université Paris sciences et lettres (PSL)-Université Paris sciences et lettres (PSL)-Université Paris Diderot - Paris 7 (UPD7)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Observatories Carnegie Institution, Carnegie Institution for Science, INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma (OAR), Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF), Galaxies, Etoiles, Physique, Instrumentation (GEPI), Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Observatoire de Paris, York University Toronto, Département d'Astrophysique, de physique des Particules, de physique Nucléaire et de l'Instrumentation Associée (DAPNIA), Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA), Institut de Recherches sur les lois Fondamentales de l'Univers (IRFU), Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA)-Université Paris-Saclay, Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), NASA-California Institute of Technology (CALTECH), GoLP/Instituto Plasmas e Fusa˜o Nuclear, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade Técnica de Lisboa (IST)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2013
• Subjects: galaxies: clusters: general; surveys; catalogs; infrared: galaxies; [SDU]Sciences of the Universe [physics]; [SDU.ASTR]Sciences of the Universe [physics]/Astrophysics [astro-ph]; Milky Way; South Pole; South pole
• Online Access: https://hal.science/hal-02533464; https://doi.org/10.1088/0067-0049/209/2/22

International audience The Spitzer South Pole Telescope Deep Field (SSDF) is a wide-area survey using Spitzer's Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) to cover 94 deg2 of extragalactic sky, making it the largest IRAC survey completed to date outside the Milky Way midplane. The SSDF is centered at (α, δ) = (23:30, -55:00), in a region that combines observations spanning a broad wavelength range from numerous facilities. These include millimeter imaging from the South Pole Telescope, far-infrared observations from Herschel/SPIRE, X-ray observations from the XMM XXL survey, near-infrared observations from the VISTA Hemisphere Survey, and radio-wavelength imaging from the Australia Telescope Compact Array, in a panchromatic project designed to address major outstanding questions surrounding galaxy clusters and the baryon budget. Here we describe the Spitzer/IRAC observations of the SSDF, including the survey design, observations, processing, source extraction, and publicly available data products. In particular, we present two band-merged catalogs, one for each of the two warm IRAC selection bands. They contain roughly 5.5 and 3.7 million distinct sources, the vast majority of which are galaxies, down to the SSDF 5σ sensitivity limits of 19.0 and 18.2 Vega mag (7.0 and 9.4 μJy) at 3.6 and 4.5 μm, respectively.