1. THE NEWFIRM MEDIUM-BAND SURVEY: PHOTOMETRIC CATALOGS, REDSHIFTS, AND THE BIMODAL COLOR DISTRIBUTION OF GALAXIES OUT TO z ~ 3.
- Author
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WHITAKER, KATHERINE E., LABBÉ, IVO, VAN DOKKUM, PIETER G., BRAMMER, GABRIEL, KRIEK, MARISKA, MARCHESINI, DANILO, QUADRI, RYAN F., FRANX, MARIJN, MUZZIN, ADAM, WILLIAMS, RIK J., BEZANSON, RACHEL, ILLINGWORTH, GARTH D., KYOUNG-SOO LEE, LUNDGREN, BRITT, NELSON, ERICA J., RUDNICK, GREGORY, TAL, TOMER, and WAKE, DAVID A.
- Subjects
ASTRONOMICAL photometry ,GALACTIC redshift ,INFRARED imaging ,STAR colors - Abstract
We present deep near-IR (NIR) medium-bandwidth photometry over the wavelength range 1-1.8 μm in the All-wavelength Extended Groth strip International Survey (AEGIS) and Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS) fields. The observations were carried out using the NOAO Extremely Wide-Field Infrared Imager (NEWFIRM) on the Mayall 4 m Telescope on Kitt Peak as part of the NEWFIRM Medium-Band Survey (NMBS), an NOAO survey program. In this paper, we describe the full details of the observations, data reduction, and photometry for the survey. We also present a public K-selected photometric catalog, along with accurate photometric redshifts. The redshifts are computed with 37 (20) filters in the COSMOS (AEGIS) fields, combining the NIR medium-bandwidth data with existing UV (Galaxy Evolution Explorer), visible and NIR (Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope and Subaru Telescope), and mid-IR (Spitzer/IRAC) imaging. We find excellent agreement with publicly available spectroscopic redshifts, with σ
z /(1 + z) ~ 1%-2% for ~4000 galaxies at z = 0-3. The NMBS catalogs contain ~13,000 galaxies at z > 1.5 with accurate photometric redshifts and rest-frame colors. Due to the increased spectral resolution obtained with the five NIR medium-band filters, the median 68% confidence intervals of the photometric redshifts of both quiescent and star-forming galaxies are a factor of about two times smaller when comparing catalogs with medium-band NIR photometry to NIR broadband photometry. We show evidence for a clear bimodal color distribution between quiescent and star-forming galaxies that persists to z ~ 3, a higher redshift than has been probed so far. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]- Published
- 2011
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