CANDELS: The Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey - The Hubble Space Telescope Observations, Imaging Data Products and Mosaics
Creators: name: Koekemoer, Anton M.
name: Faber, S. M.
name: Ferguson, Henry C.
name: Grogin, Norman A.
name: Kocevski, Dale D.
name: Koo, David C.
name: Lai, Kamson
name: Lotz, Jennifer M.
name: Lucas, Ray A.
name: McGrath, Elizabeth J.
name: Ogaz, Sara
name: Rajan, Abhijith
name: Riess, Adam G.
name: Rodney, Steve A.
name: Strolger, Louis
name: Casertano, Stefano
name: Castellano, Marco
name: Dahlen, Tomas
name: Dickinson, Mark
name: Dolch, Timothy
name: Fontana, Adriano
name: Giavalisco, Mauro
name: Grazian, Andrea
name: Guo, Yicheng
name: Hathi, Nimish P.
name: Huang, Kuang-Han
name: van der Wel, Arjen
name: Yan, Hao-Jing
name: Acquaviva, Viviana
name: Almaini, David M. Alexander Omar
name: Ashby, Matthew L. N.
name: Barden, Marco
name: Bell, Eric F.
name: Bournaud, Frédéric
name: Brown, Thomas M.
name: Caputi, Karina I.
name: Cassata, Paolo
name: Challis, Peter
name: Chary, Ranga-Ram
name: Cheung, Edmond
name: Cirasuolo, Michele
name: Conselice, Christopher J.
name: Cooray, Asantha Roshan
name: Croton, Darren J.
name: Daddi, Emanuele
name: Davé, Romeel
name: de Mello, Duilia F.
name: de Ravel, Loic
name: Dekel, Avishai
name: Donley, Jennifer L.
name: Dunlop, James S.
name: Dutton, Aaron A.
name: Elbaz, David
name: Fazio, Giovanni G.
name: Filippenko, Alex V.
name: Finkelstein, Steven L.
name: Frazer, Chris
name: Gardner, Jonathan P.
name: Garnavich, Peter M.
name: Gawiser, Eric
name: Gruetzbauch, Ruth
name: Hartley, Will G.
name: Häussler, Boris
name: Herrington, Jessica
name: Hopkins, Philip F.
name: Huang, Jia-Sheng
name: Jha, Saurabh
name: Johnson, Andrew
name: Kartaltepe, Jeyhan S.
name: Khostovan, Ali Ahmad
name: Kirshner, Robert P.
name: Lani, Caterina
name: Lee, Kyoung-Soo
name: Li, Weidong
name: Madau, Piero
name: McCarthy, Patrick J.
name: McIntosh, Daniel H.
name: McLure, Ross J.
name: McPartland, Conor
name: Mobasher, Bahram
name: Moreira, Heidi
name: Mortlock, Alice
name: Moustakas, Leonidas A.
name: Mozena, Mark
name: Nandra, Kirpal
name: Newman, Jeffrey A.
name: Nielsen, Jennifer L.
name: Niemi, Sami
name: Noeske, Kai G.
name: Papovich, Casey J.
name: Pentericci, Laura
name: Pope, Alexandra
name: Primack, Joel R.
name: Ravindranath, Swara
name: Reddy, Naveen A.
name: Renzini, Alvio
name: Rix, Hans-Walter
name: Robaina, Aday R.
name: Rosario, David J.
name: Rosati, Piero
name: Salimbeni, Sara
name: Scarlata, Claudia
name: Siana, Brian
name: Simard, Luc
name: Smidt, Joseph
name: Snyder, Diana
name: Somerville, Rachel S.
name: Spinrad, Hyron
name: Straughn, Amber N.
name: Telford, Olivia
name: Teplitz, Harry I.
name: Trump, Jonathan R.
name: Vargas, Carlos
name: Villforth, Carolin
name: Wagner, Cory R.
name: Wandro, Pat
name: Wechsler, Risa H.
name: Weiner, Benjamin J.
name: Wiklind, Tommy
name: Wild, Vivienne
name: Wilson, Grant
name: Wuyts, Stijn
name: Yun, Min S.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2011
Subjects: subject: Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: This paper describes the Hubble Space Telescope imaging data products and data reduction procedures for the Cosmic Assembly Near-IR Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey (CANDELS). This survey is designed to document the evolution of galaxies and black holes at $z\sim1.5-8$, and to study Type Ia SNe beyond $z&gt;1.5$. Five premier multi-wavelength sky regions are selected, each with extensive multiwavelength observations. The primary CANDELS data consist of imaging obtained in the Wide Field Camera 3 / infrared channel (WFC3/IR) and UVIS channel, along with the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). The CANDELS/Deep survey covers \sim125 square arcminutes within GOODS-N and GOODS-S, while the remainder consists of the CANDELS/Wide survey, achieving a total of \sim800 square arcminutes across GOODS and three additional fields (EGS, COSMOS, and UDS). We summarize the observational aspects of the survey as motivated by the scientific goals and present a detailed description of the data reduction procedures and products from the survey. Our data reduction methods utilize the most up to date calibration files and image combination procedures. We have paid special attention to correcting a range of instrumental effects, including CTE degradation for ACS, removal of electronic bias-striping present in ACS data after SM4, and persistence effects and other artifacts in WFC3/IR. For each field, we release mosaics for individual epochs and eventual mosaics containing data from all epochs combined, to facilitate photometric variability studies and the deepest possible photometry. A more detailed overview of the science goals and observational design of the survey are presented in a companion paper.
description: 39 pages, 25 figures