The Carnegie-Spitzer-IMACS Redshift Survey of Galaxy Evolution since z=1.5: I. Description and Methodology and More!

Abstract

We describe the Carnegie-Spitzer-IMACS (CSI) Survey, a wide-field, near-IR selected spectrophotometric redshift survey with IMACS on Magellan-Baade. CSI uses a flux-limited sample of galaxies in Spitzer IRAC 3.6micron imaging of SWIRE fields to efficiently trace the stellar mass of average galaxies to z~1.5. This paper provides an overview of the survey selection, observations, and processing of the photometry and spectrophotometry. We also describe the analysis of the data: new methods of fitting synthetic SEDs are used to derive redshifts, stellar masses, emission line luminosities, and coarse information on recent star-formation. Our unique methodology for analyzing low-dispersion spectra taken with multilayer prisms in IMACS, combined with panchromatic photometry from the ultraviolet to the IR, has yielded high quality redshifts for 43,347 galaxies in our first 5.3 sq. degs of the SWIRE XMM-LSS field. A new approach to assessing data quality is also described, and three different approaches are used to estimate our redshift errors, with robust agreement. Over the full range of 3.6micron fluxes of our selection, we find typical redshift uncertainties of sigma_z/(1+z) < 0.015. In comparisons with previously published spectroscopic redshifts we find scatters of sigma_z/(1+z) = 0.011 for galaxies at 0.7< z< 0.9, and sigma_z/(1+z) = 0.014 for galaxies at 0.9< z< 1.2. For galaxies brighter and fainter than i=23 mag, we find sigma_z/(1+z) = 0.008 and sigma_z/(1+z) = 0.022, respectively. Notably, our low-dispersion spectroscopy and analysis yields comparable redshift uncertainties and success rates for both red and blue galaxies, largely eliminating color-based systematics that can seriously bias observed dependencies of galaxy evolution on environment.

Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal; 27 pages and 25 figures. This version has so much additional content that it supercedes arXiv:1201.0783

References in corpus (5)

• Detection of quiescent galaxies in a bicolor sequence from z=0-2
• PRIMUS: Constraints on Star Formation Quenching and Galaxy Merging, and the Evolution of the Stellar Mass Function From z=0-1
• Towards a Concordant Model of Halo Occupation Statistics
• GMASS Ultradeep Spectroscopy of Galaxies at redshift z~2. I. The stellar metallicity
• A Pilot Survey for KX QSOs in the UKIDSS Ultra Deep Survey Field

Cited by in corpus (38)

• How to Measure Galaxy Star Formation Histories II: Nonparametric Models
• Deriving Physical Properties from Broadband Photometry with Prospector: Description of the Model and a Demonstration of its Accuracy Using 129 Galaxies in the Local Universe
• Spectroscopic Confirmation of the Rich z=1.80 Galaxy Cluster JKCS 041 Using the WFC3 Grism: Environmental Trends in the Ages and Structure of Quiescent Galaxies
• Discovery and Follow-up of ASASSN-19dj: An X-ray and UV Luminous TDE in an Extreme Post-Starburst Galaxy
• Discovery and Early Evolution of ASASSN-19bt, the First TDE Detected by TESS
• The XMM-SERVS survey: new XMM-Newton point-source catalog for the XMM-LSS field
• Discovery of a Strongly Lensed Massive Quiescent Galaxy at z=2.636: Spatially Resolved Spectroscopy and Indications of Rotation
• Massive Dead Galaxies at z~2 with HST Grism Spectroscopy I. Star Formation Histories and Metallicity Enrichment
• Resolving Quiescent Galaxies at $z\gtrsim 2$: I. Search for Gravitationally Lensed Sources and Characterization of their Structure, Stellar Populations, and Line Emission
• Chemistry of the Most Metal-poor Stars in the Bulge and the z > 10 Universe
• Spectral Energy Distributions in Three Deep-Drilling Fields of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time: Source Classification and Galaxy Properties
• The XMM-SERVS survey: XMM-Newton point-source catalogs for the W-CDF-S and ELAIS-S1 fields
• The Most Metal-poor Stars in the Magellanic Clouds are $r$-process Enhanced
• The emission of interpulses by a 6.45-hour period coherent radio transient
• New Fe I level energies and line identifications from stellar spectra
• Early Results From GLASS-JWST. XVII: Building the First Galaxies -- Chapter 1. Star Formation Histories at 5<z < 7
• Demonstrating Diversity in Star Formation Histories with the CSI Survey
• A Unique View of AGN-Driven Molecular Outflows: The Discovery of a Massive Galaxy Counterpart to a $z=2.4$ High-Metallicity Damped Lyman-$\alpha$ Absorber
• REQUIEM-2D: Spatially Resolved Stellar Populations from HST 2D Grism Spectroscopy
• The Most Metal-poor Stars in the Inner Bulge
• Metal Deficiency in Two Massive Dead Galaxies at $z\sim 2$
• Late Bloomer Galaxies: Growing Up in Cosmic Autumn
• The universality of the rapid neutron-capture process revealed by a possible disrupted dwarf galaxy star
• Synthesizing Stellar Populations in South Pole Telescope Galaxy Clusters: I. Ages of Quiescent Member Galaxies at 0.3 < z < 1.4
• Constraining the Milky Way's Ultraviolet to Infrared SED with Gaussian Process Regression
• The Chemical Composition of Extreme-Velocity Stars
• Constraints on Fluctuating Star Formation Rates for Intermediate-mass Galaxies with H$\alpha$ and UV Luminosities
• The Stellar Mass - Halo Mass Relation for Low Mass X-ray Groups at 0.5<z<1 in the CDFS with CSI
• Gravity and the Nonlinear Growth of Structure in the Carnegie-Spitzer-IMACS Redshift Survey
• Representative galaxy age-metallicity relationships
• The Grism Lens-Amplified Survey from Space (GLASS). XII. Spatially Resolved Galaxy Star Formation Histories and True Evolutionary Paths at z > 1
• The Grism Lens-Amplified Survey from Space (GLASS). XIII. G800L optical spectra from the parallel fields
• PRIMUS: The Effect of Physical Scale on the Luminosity-Dependence of Galaxy Clustering via Cross-Correlations
• ZFIRE: The Beginning of the End for Massive Galaxies at z ~ 2 and Why Environment Matters
• Central Concentration of Asymmetric Features in Post-starburst Galaxies at $z\sim 0.8$
• CLIMBER: Galaxy-Halo Connection Constraints from Next-Generation Surveys
• The Jet Paths of Radio AGN and their Cluster Weather
• pop-cosmos: Star formation over 12 Gyr from generative modelling of a deep infrared-selected galaxy catalogue