No Arabic abstract
Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) is a wide-field imaging camera on the prime focus of the 8.2m Subaru telescope on the summit of Maunakea in Hawaii. A team of scientists from Japan, Taiwan and Princeton University is using HSC to carry out a 300-night multi-band imaging survey of the high-latitude sky. The survey includes three layers: the Wide layer will cover 1400 deg$^2$ in five broad bands ($grizy$), with a $5,sigma$ point-source depth of $r approx 26$. The Deep layer covers a total of 26~deg$^2$ in four fields, going roughly a magnitude fainter, while the UltraDeep layer goes almost a magnitude fainter still in two pointings of HSC (a total of 3.5 deg$^2$). Here we describe the instrument, the science goals of the survey, and the survey strategy and data processing. This paper serves as an introduction to a special issue of the Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japan, which includes a large number of technical and scientific papers describing results from the early phases of this survey.
We present an overview of a deep transient survey of the COSMOS field with the Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC). The survey was performed for the 1.77 deg$^2$ ultra-deep layer and 5.78 deg$^2$ deep layer in the Subaru Strategic Program over 6- and 4-month periods from 2016 to 2017, respectively. The ultra-deep layer shows a median depth per epoch of 26.4, 26.3, 26.0, 25.6, and 24.6 mag in $g$, $r$, $i$, $z$, and $y$ bands, respectively; the deep layer is $sim0.6$ mag shallower. In total, 1,824 supernova candidates were identified. Based on light curve fitting and derived light curve shape parameter, we classified 433 objects as Type Ia supernovae (SNe); among these candidates, 129 objects have spectroscopic or COSMOS2015 photometric redshifts and 58 objects are located at $z > 1$. Our unique dataset doubles the number of Type Ia SNe at $z > 1$ and enables various time-domain analyses of Type II SNe, high redshift superluminous SNe, variable stars, and active galactic nuclei.
Rapidly evolving transients form a new class of transients which show shorter timescales of the light curves than those of typical core-collapse and thermonuclear supernovae. We performed a systematic search for rapidly evolving transients using the deep data taken with the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program Transient Survey. By measuring the timescales of the light curves of 1824 transients, we identified 5 rapidly evolving transients. Our samples are found in a wide range of redshifts (0.3 $le$ z $le$ 1.5) and peak absolute magnitudes ($-$17 $ge$ $M_i$ $ge$ $-$20). The properties of the light curves are similar to those of the previously discovered rapidly evolving transients. They show a relatively blue spectral energy distribution, with the best-fit blackbody of 8,000 - 18,000 K. We show that some of the transients require power sources other than the radioactive decays of $^{56}$Ni because of their high peak luminosities and short timescales. The host galaxies of all the samples are star-forming galaxies, suggesting a massive star origin for the rapidly evolving transients. The event rate is roughly estimated to be $sim$4,000 events yr$^{-1}$ Gpc$^{-3}$, which is about 1 $%$ of core-collapse supernovae.
We present and characterize the catalog of galaxy shape measurements that will be used for cosmological weak lensing measurements in the Wide layer of the first year of the Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) survey. The catalog covers an area of 136.9 deg$^2$ split into six fields, with a mean $i$-band seeing of $0.58$ arcsec and $5sigma$ point-source depth of $isim 26$. Given conservative galaxy selection criteria for first year science, the depth and excellent image quality results in unweighted and weighted source number densities of 24.6 and 21.8 arcmin$^{-2}$, respectively. We define the requirements for cosmological weak lensing science with this catalog, then focus on characterizing potential systematics in the catalog using a series of internal null tests for problems with point-spread function (PSF) modeling, shear estimation, and other aspects of the image processing. We find that the PSF models narrowly meet requirements for weak lensing science with this catalog, with fractional PSF model size residuals of approximately $0.003$ (requirement: 0.004) and the PSF model shape correlation function $rho_1<3times 10^{-7}$ (requirement: $4times 10^{-7}$) at 0.5$^circ$ scales. A variety of galaxy shape-related null tests are statistically consistent with zero, but star-galaxy shape correlations reveal additive systematics on $>1^circ$ scales that are sufficiently large as to require mitigation in cosmic shear measurements. Finally, we discuss the dominant systematics and the planned algorithmic changes to reduce them in future data reductions.
We present the galaxy shear catalog that will be used for the three-year cosmological weak gravitational lensing analyses using data from the Wide layer of the Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) Subaru Strategic Program (SSP) Survey. The galaxy shapes are measured from the $i$-band imaging data acquired from 2014 to 2019 and calibrated with image simulations that resemble the observing conditions of the survey based on training galaxy images from the Hubble Space Telescope in the COSMOS region. The catalog covers an area of 433.48 deg$^2$ of the northern sky, split into six fields. The mean $i$-band seeing is 0.59 arcsec. With conservative galaxy selection criteria (e.g., $i$-band magnitude brighter than 24.5), the observed raw galaxy number density is 22.9 arcmin$^{-2}$, and the effective galaxy number density is 19.9 arcmin$^{-2}$. The calibration removes the galaxy property-dependent shear estimation bias to a level: $|delta m|<9times 10^{-3}$. The bias residual $delta m$ shows no dependence on redshift in the range $0<zleq 3$. We define the requirements for cosmological weak lensing science for this shear catalog, and quantify potential systematics in the catalog using a series of internal null tests for systematics related to point-spread function modelling and shear estimation. A variety of the null tests are statistically consistent with zero or within requirements, but (i) there is evidence for PSF model shape residual correlations; and (ii) star-galaxy shape correlations reveal additive systematics. Both effects become significant on $>1$ degree scales and will require mitigation during the inference of cosmological parameters using cosmic shear measurements.
In this paper, we describe the optical imaging data processing pipeline developed for the Subaru Telescopes Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) instrument. The HSC Pipeline builds on the prototype pipeline being developed by the Large Synoptic Survey Telescopes Data Management system, adding customizations for HSC, large-scale processing capabilities, and novel algorithms that have since been reincorporated into the LSST codebase. While designed primarily to reduce HSC Subaru Strategic Program (SSP) data, it is also the recommended pipeline for reducing general-observer HSC data. The HSC pipeline includes high level processing steps that generate coadded images and science-ready catalogs as well as low-level detrending and image characterizations.