1204.6586 (H. J. McCracken et al.)

UltraVISTA: a new ultra-deep near-infrared survey in COSMOS    [PDF]

H. J. McCracken, B. Milvang-Jensen, J. Dunlop, M. Franx, J. P. U. Fynbo, O. Le Fèvre, J. Holt, K. I. Caputi, Y. Goranova, F. Buitrago, J. Emerson, W. Freudling, P. Hudelot, C. López-Sanjuan, F. Magnard, Y. Mellier, P. Møller, K. K. Nilsson, W. Sutherland, L. Tasca, J. Zabl

In this paper we describe the first data release of the UltraVISTA near-infrared imaging survey of the COSMOS field. We summarise the key goals and design of the survey and provide a detailed description of our data reduction techniques . We provide stacked, sky-subtracted images in $YJHK_{\rm s}$ and narrow-band filters constructed from data collected during the first year of UltraVISTA observations. Our stacked images reach $5\sigma$ $AB$ depths in an aperture of $2\arcsec$ diameter of $\sim 25$ in $Y$ and $\sim 24$ in $JHK_{\rm s}$ bands and all have sub-arcsecond seeing. To this $5\sigma$ limit, our $K_{\rm s}$ catalogue contains 216,268 sources. We carry out a series of quality assessment tests on our images and catalogues, comparing our stacks with existing catalogues. The $1\sigma$ astrometric RMS in both directions for stars selected with $17.0View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1204.6586