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Register a new userUltraVISTA: a new ultra-deep near-infrared survey in COSMOS
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Henry Joy McCracken
Publication date
2012
fields
Physics
and research's language is
English
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In this paper we describe the first data release of the UltraVISTA near-infrared imaging survey of the COSMOS field. We summarise the key goals and design of the survey and provide a detailed description of our data reduction techniques . We provide stacked, sky-subtracted images in $YJHK_{rm s}$ and narrow-band filters constructed from data collected during the first year of UltraVISTA observations. Our stacked images reach $5sigma$ $AB$ depths in an aperture of $2arcsec$ diameter of $sim 25$ in $Y$ and $sim 24$ in $JHK_{rm s}$ bands and all have sub-arcsecond seeing. To this $5sigma$ limit, our $K_{rm s}$ catalogue contains 216,268 sources. We carry out a series of quality assessment tests on our images and catalogues, comparing our stacks with existing catalogues. The $1sigma$ astrometric RMS in both directions for stars selected with $17.0<K_{rm s}rm {(AB)} <19.5$ is $sim 0.08arcsec$ in comparison to the publicly-available COSMOS ACS catalogues. Our images are resampled to the same pixel scale and tangent point as the publicly available COSMOS data and so may be easily used to generate multi-colour catalogues using this data. All images and catalogues presented in this paper are publicly available through ESOs phase 3 archiving and distribution system and from the UltraVISTA web site.
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Several recent studies have shown that about half of the massive galaxies at z~2 are in a quiescent phase. Moreover, these galaxies are commonly found to be ultra-compact with half-light radii of ~1 kpc. We have obtained a ~29 hr spectrum of a typical quiescent, ultra-dense galaxy at z=2.1865 with the Gemini Near-Infrared Spectrograph. The spectrum exhibits a strong optical break and several absorption features, which have not previously been detected in z>2 quiescent galaxies. Comparison of the spectral energy distribution with stellar population synthesis models implies a low star formation rate (SFR) of 1-3 Msol/yr, an age of 1.3-2.2 Gyr, and a stellar mass of ~2x10^11 Msol. We detect several faint emission lines, with emission-line ratios of [NII]/Halpha, [SII]/Halpha and [OII]/[OIII] typical of low-ionization nuclear emission-line regions. Thus, neither the stellar continuum nor the nebular emission implies active star formation. The current SFR is <1% of the past average SFR. If this galaxy is representative of compact quiescent galaxies beyond z=2, it implies that quenching of star formation is extremely efficient and also indicates that low luminosity active galactic nuclei (AGNs) could be common in these objects. Nuclear emission is a potential concern for the size measurement. However, we show that the AGN contributes <8% to the rest-frame optical emission. A possible post-starburst population may affect size measurements more strongly; although a 0.5 Gyr old stellar population can make up <10% of the total stellar mass, it could account for up to ~40% of the optical light. Nevertheless, this spectrum shows that this compact galaxy is dominated by an evolved stellar population.
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 (5sigma 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 5sigma 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.
This paper seeks to test if the large-scale galaxy distribution can be characterized as a fractal system. Tools appropriate for describing galaxy fractal structures with a single fractal dimension $D$ in relativistic settings are developed and applied to the UltraVISTA galaxy survey. A graph of volume-limited samples corresponding to the redshift limits in each redshift bins for absolute magnitude is presented. Fractal analysis using the standard $Lambda$CDM cosmological model is applied to a reduced subsample in the range $0.1le z le 4$, and the entire sample within $0.1le zle 6$. Three relativistic distances are used, the luminosity distance $d_L$, redshift distance $d_z$ and galaxy area distance $d_G$, because for data at $zgtrsim 0.3$ relativistic effects are such that for the same $z$ these distance definitions yield different values. The results show two consecutive and distinct redshift ranges in both the reduced and complete samples where the data behave as a single fractal galaxy structure. For the reduced subsample we found that the fractal dimension is $D=left(1.58pm0.20right)$ for $z<1$, and $D=left(0.59pm0.28right)$ for $1le zle 4$. The complete sample yielded $D=left(1.63pm0.20right)$ for $z<1$ and $D=left(0.52pm0.29right)$ for $1le zle6$. These results are consistent with those found by Conde-Saavedra et al. (2015; arXiv:1409.5409v1), where a similar analysis was applied to a much more limited survey at equivalent redshift depths, and suggest that either there are yet unclear observational biases causing such decrease in the fractal dimension, or the galaxy clustering was possibly more sparse and the universe void dominated in a not too distant past.
We have exploited the new, deep, near-infrared UltraVISTA imaging of the COSMOS field, in tandem with deep optical and mid-infrared imaging, to conduct a new search for luminous galaxies at redshifts z ~ 7. The unique multi-wavelength dataset provided by VISTA, CFHT, Subaru, HST and Spitzer over a common area of 1 deg^2 has allowed us to select galaxy candidates at z > 6.5 by searching first for Y+J-detected (< 25 AB mag) objects which are undetected in the CFHT+HST optical data. This sample was then refined using a photometric redshift fitting code, enabling the rejection of lower-redshift galaxy contaminants and cool galactic M,L,T dwarf stars.The final result of this process is a small sample of (at most) ten credible galaxy candidates at z > 6.5 which we present in this paper. The first four of these appear to be robust galaxies at z > 6.5, and fitting to their stacked SED yields z = 6.98+-0.05 with a stellar mass M* = 5x10^9 Msun, and rest-frame UV spectral slope beta = -2.0+-0.2. The next three are also good candidates for z > 6.5 galaxies, but the possibility that they are low-redshift galaxies or dwarf stars cannot be excluded. Our final subset of three additional candidates is afflicted not only by potential dwarf-star contamination, but also contains objects likely to lie at redshifts just below z = 6.5. We show that the three even-brighter z > 7 galaxy candidates reported in the COSMOS field by Capak et al. (2011) in fact all lie at z ~ 1.5-3.5. Consequently the new z ~ 7 galaxies reported here are the first credible z ~ 7 Lyman-break galaxies discovered in the COSMOS field and, as the most UV-luminous discovered to date at these redshifts, are prime targets for deep follow-up spectroscopy. We explore their physical properties, and briefly consider the implications of their inferred number density for the form of the galaxy luminosity function at z = 7.
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