CANDELS: The Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey
Creators: name: Grogin, Norman A.
name: Kocevski, Dale D.
name: Faber, S. M.
name: Ferguson, Henry C.
name: Koekemoer, Anton M.
name: Riess, Adam G.
name: Acquaviva, Viviana
name: Alexander, David M.
name: Almaini, 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: Casertano, Stefano
name: Cassata, Paolo
name: Castellano, Marco
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: Dahlen, Tomas
name: Davé, Romeel
name: de Mello, Duília F.
name: Dekel, Avishai
name: Dickinson, Mark
name: Dolch, Timothy
name: Donley, Jennifer L.
name: Dunlop, James S.
name: Dutton, Aaron A.
name: Elbaz, David
name: Fazio, Giovanni G.
name: Filippenko, Alexei V.
name: Finkelstein, Steven L.
name: Fontana, Adriano
name: Gardner, Jonathan P.
name: Garnavich, Peter M.
name: Gawiser, Eric
name: Giavalisco, Mauro
name: Grazian, Andrea
name: Guo, Yicheng
name: Hathi, Nimish P.
name: Häussler, Boris
name: Hopkins, Philip F.
name: Huang, Jia-Sheng
name: Huang, Kuang-Han
name: Jha, Saurabh W.
name: Kartaltepe, Jeyhan S.
name: Kirshner, Robert P.
name: Koo, David C.
name: Lai, Kamson
name: Lee, Kyoung-Soo
name: Li, Weidong
name: Lotz, Jennifer M.
name: Lucas, Ray A.
name: Madau, Piero
name: McCarthy, Patrick J.
name: McGrath, Elizabeth J.
name: McIntosh, Daniel H.
name: McLure, Ross J.
name: Mobasher, Bahram
name: Moustakas, Leonidas A.
name: Mozena, Mark
name: Nandra, Kirpal
name: Newman, Jeffrey A.
name: Niemi, Sami-Matias
name: Noeske, Kai G.
name: Papovich, Casey J.
name: Pentericci, Laura
name: Pope, Alexandra
name: Primack, Joel R.
name: Rajan, Abhijith
name: Ravindranath, Swara
name: Reddy, Naveen A.
name: Renzini, Alvio
name: Rix, Hans-Walter
name: Robaina, Aday R.
name: Rodney, Steven A.
name: Rosario, David J.
name: Rosati, Piero
name: Salimbeni, Sara
name: Scarlata, Claudia
name: Siana, Brian
name: Simard, Luc
name: Smidt, Joseph
name: Somerville, Rachel S.
name: Spinrad, Hyron
name: Straughn, Amber N.
name: Strolger, Louis-Gregory
name: Telford, Olivia
name: Teplitz, Harry I.
name: Trump, Jonathan R.
name: van der Wel, Arjen
name: Villforth, Carolin
name: Wechsler, Risa H.
name: Weiner, Benjamin J.
name: Wiklind, Tommy
name: Wild, Vivienne
name: Wilson, Grant
name: Wuyts, Stijn
name: Yan, Hao-Jing
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: The Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey (CANDELS) is designed to document the first third of galactic evolution, over the approximate redshift (z) range 8--1.5. It will image &gt;250,000 distant galaxies using three separate cameras on the Hubble Space Telescope, from the mid-ultraviolet to the near-infrared, and will find and measure Type Ia supernovae at z&gt;1.5 to test their accuracy as standardizable candles for cosmology. Five premier multi-wavelength sky regions are selected, each with extensive ancillary data. The use of five widely separated fields mitigates cosmic variance and yields statistically robust and complete samples of galaxies down to a stellar mass of 10^9 M_\odot to z \approx 2, reaching the knee of the ultraviolet luminosity function (UVLF) of galaxies to z \approx 8. The survey covers approximately 800 arcmin^2 and is divided into two parts. The CANDELS/Deep survey (5σ point-source limit H=27.7 mag) covers \sim 125 arcmin^2 within GOODS-N and GOODS-S. The CANDELS/Wide survey includes GOODS and three additional fields (EGS, COSMOS, and UDS) and covers the full area to a 5σ point-source limit of H \gtrsim 27.0 mag. Together with the Hubble Ultra Deep Fields, the strategy creates a three-tiered "wedding cake" approach that has proven efficient for extragalactic surveys. Data from the survey are nonproprietary and are useful for a wide variety of science investigations. In this paper, we describe the basic motivations for the survey, the CANDELS team science goals and the resulting observational requirements, the field selection and geometry, and the observing design. The Hubble data processing and products are described in a companion paper.
description: Submitted to Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series; Revised version, subsequent to referee report