Galaxies in Southern Bright Star Fields I. Near-infrared imaging

Abstract

As a prerequisite for cosmological studies using adaptive optics techniques, we have begun to identify and characterize faint sources in the vicinity of bright stars at high Galactic latitudes. The initial phase of this work has been a program of K_s imaging conducted with SOFI at the ESO NTT. From observations of 42 southern fields evenly divided between the spring and autumn skies, we have identified 391 additional stars and 1589 galaxies lying at separations 60" from candidate guide stars in the magnitude range 9.0 R 12.4. When analyzed as a "discrete deep field" with 131 arcmin^2 area, our dataset gives galaxy number counts that agree with those derived previously over the range 16 K_s 20.5. This consistency indicates that in the aggregate, our fields should be suitable for future statistical studies. We provide our source catalogue as a resource for users of large telescopes in the southern hemisphere.

arXiv comment10 pages, 7 figures, accepted by A&A; Table 3 is available at http://www.rzg.mpg.de/~ajb/data.html pending upload to CDS

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• Subaru Super Deep Field with Adaptive Optics I. Observations and First Implications
• Accounting for anisoplanatic point spread function in deep wide-field adaptive optics images
• Galaxy morphology and evolution from SWAN Adaptive Optics imaging
• A Catalogue of Potential Adaptive Optics Survey Fields from the UKIRT Archive