The Spitzer-IRAC/MIPS Extragalactic Survey (SIMES) in the South Ecliptic Pole Field

March 2016 • 2016ApJS..223....1B

Authors • Baronchelli, I. • Scarlata, C. • Rodighiero, G. • Franceschini, A. • Capak, P. L. • Mei, S. • Vaccari, M. • Marchetti, L. • Hibon, P. • Sedgwick, C. • Pearson, C. • Serjeant, S. • Menéndez-Delmestre, K. • Salvato, M. • Malkan, M. • Teplitz, H. I. • Hayes, M. • Colbert, J. • Papovich, C. • Devlin, M. • Kovacs, A. • Scott, K. S. • Surace, J. • Kirkpatrick, J. D. • Atek, H. • Urrutia, T. • Scoville, N. Z. • Takeuchi, T. T.

Abstract • We present the Spitzer-IRAC/MIPS Extragalactic survey (SIMES) in the South Ecliptic Pole field. The large area covered (7.7 deg²), together with one of the lowest Galactic cirrus emissions in the entire sky and a very extensive coverage by Spitzer, Herschel, Akari, and GALEX, make the SIMES field ideal for extragalactic studies. The elongated geometry of the SIMES area (≈4:1), allowing for significant cosmic variance reduction, further improves the quality of statistical studies in this field. Here we present the reduction and photometric measurements of the Spitzer/IRAC data. The survey reaches depths of 1.93 and 1.75 μJy (1σ) at 3.6 and 4.5 μm, respectively. We discuss the multiwavelength IRAC-based catalog, completed with optical, mid-, and far-IR observations. We detect 341,000 sources with {F}_{3.6μ {{m}}}≥slant 3σ . Of these, 10% have an associated 24 μm counterpart, while 2.7% have an associated SPIRE source. We release the catalog through the NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive. Two scientific applications of these IRAC data are presented in this paper. First, we compute integral number counts at 3.6 μm. Second, we use the [3.6]-[4.5] color index to identify galaxy clusters at z > 1.3. We select 27 clusters in the full area, a result consistent with previous studies at similar depth.

Links

• PREPRINT http://arxiv.org/abs/1602.00892
• ELECTR https://doi.org/10.3847%2F0067-0049%2F223%2F1%2F1
• SIMBAD http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbo.pl?bibcode=2016ApJS..223....1B
• PDF https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/0067-0049/223/1/1/pdf
• PDF https://stacks.iop.org/0067-0049/223/1/pdf
• DATA http://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/ApJS/223/1
• DATA http://archives.esac.esa.int/hsa/whsa/?ACTION=PUBLICATION&ID=2016ApJS..223....1B
• DATA https://irsa.ipac.caltech.edu/bibdata/2016/B/2016ApJS..223....1B.html