Spitzer UltRa Faint SUrvey Program (SURFS UP) I: An Overview

Abstract

SURFSUP is a joint Spitzer and HST Exploration Science program using 10 galaxy clusters as cosmic telescopes to study z >~ 7 galaxies at intrinsically lower luminosities, enabled by gravitational lensing, than blank field surveys of the same exposure time. Our main goal is to measure stellar masses and ages of these galaxies, which are the most likely sources of the ionizing photons that drive reionization. Accurate knowledge of the star formation density and star formation history at this epoch is necessary to determine whether these galaxies indeed reionized the universe. Determination of the stellar masses and ages requires measuring rest frame optical light, which only Spitzer can probe for sources at z >~ 7, for a large enough sample of typical galaxies. Our program consists of 550 hours of Spitzer/IRAC imaging covering 10 galaxy clusters with very well-known mass distributions, making them extremely precise cosmic telescopes. We combine our data with archival observations to obtain mosaics with ~30 hours exposure time in both 3.6$\mu$m and 4.5$\mu$m in the central 4 arcmin x 4 arcmin field and ~15 hours in the flanking fields. This results in 3-$\sigma$ sensitivity limits of ~26.6 and ~26.2AB magnitudes for the central field in the IRAC 3.6 and 4.5$\mu$m bands, respectively. To illustrate the survey strategy and characteristics we introduce the sample, present the details of the data reduction and demonstrate that these data are sufficient for in-depth studies of z >~ 7 sources (using a z=9.5 galaxy behind MACSJ1149.5+2223 as an example). For the first cluster of the survey (the Bullet Cluster) we have released all high-level data mosaics and IRAC empirical PSF models. In the future we plan to release these data products for the entire survey.

14 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ

References in corpus (14)

• COSMOS Photometric Redshifts with 30-bands for 2-deg2
• The Mass-Metallicity Relation at z~2
• Observational constraints on Cosmic Reionization
• A complete sample of twelve very X-ray luminous galaxy clusters at z>0.5
• The Behavior of the Aromatic Features in M101 HII Regions: Evidence for Dust Processing
• The build-up of the colour-magnitude relation in galaxy clusters since z~0.8
• Photometric redshifts in the SWIRE Survey
• The Rest-Frame Optical Luminosity Function of Cluster Galaxies at z<0.8 and the Assembly of the Cluster Red Sequence
• The history of mass assembly of faint red galaxies in 28 galaxy clusters since z=1.3
• The Build-up of the Red Sequence in the galaxy cluster MS1054-0321 at z=0.831
• The Red Sequence Luminosity Function in Massive Intermediate Redshift Galaxy Clusters
• The buildup of stellar mass and the 3.6 micron luminosity function in clusters from z=1.25 to z=0.2
• The Environmental Dependence of Properties of Galaxies around the RDCSJ0910+54 Cluster at z=1.1
• Spectroscopic Confirmation of a z=6.740 Galaxy behind the Bullet Cluster

Cited by in corpus (12)

• Inferences on the Timeline of Reionization at z~8 From the KMOS Lens-Amplified Spectroscopic Survey
• Constraining the neutral fraction of hydrogen in the IGM at redshift 7.5
• ALMA [CII] detection of a redshift 7 lensed galaxy behind RXJ1347.1-1145
• VIMOS Ultra-Deep Survey (VUDS): Witnessing the Assembly of a Massive Cluster at z~3.3
• Young Galaxy Candidates in the Hubble Frontier Fields IV. MACS J1149.5+2223
• An exquisitely deep view of quenching galaxies through the gravitational lens: Stellar population, morphology, and ionized gas
• A census of optically dark massive galaxies in the early Universe from magnification by lensing galaxy clusters
• SuperBoRG: Search for The Brightest of Reionizing Galaxies and Quasars in HST Parallel Imaging Data
• The high-redshift Universe with Spitzer
• RELICS-DP7: Spectroscopic Confirmation of a Dichromatic Primeval Galaxy at z ~ 7
• The KMOS Lens-Amplified Spectroscopic Survey (KLASS): Kinematics and clumpiness of low-mass galaxies at cosmic noon
• Harnessing the Hubble Space Telescope Archives: A Catalogue of 21,926 Interacting Galaxies