The Arizona CDFS Environment Survey (ACES): A Magellan/IMACS Spectroscopic Survey of the Chandra Deep Field-South

September 2012 • 2012MNRAS.425.2116C

Authors • Cooper, Michael C. • Yan, Renbin • Dickinson, Mark • Juneau, Stéphanie • Lotz, Jennifer M. • Newman, Jeffrey A. • Papovich, Casey • Salim, Samir • Walth, Gregory • Weiner, Benjamin J. • Willmer, Christopher N. A.

Abstract • We present the Arizona CDFS Environment Survey (ACES), a recently completed spectroscopic redshift survey of the Chandra Deep Field-South (CDFS) conducted using the Inamori-Magellan Areal Camera and Spectrograph on the Magellan-Baade telescope. In total, the survey targeted 7277 unique sources down to a limiting magnitude of R_AB = 24.1, yielding 5080 secure redshifts across the ∼30 arcmin × 30 arcmin extended CDFS region. The ACES data set delivers a significant increase to both the spatial coverage and the sampling density of the spectroscopic observations in the field. Combined with previously published spectroscopic redshifts, ACES now creates a highly complete survey of the galaxy population at R < 23, enabling the local galaxy density (or environment) on relatively small scales (∼1 Mpc) to be measured at z < 1 in one of the most heavily studied and data-rich fields in the sky. Here, we describe the motivation, design and implementation of the survey and present a preliminary redshift and environment catalogue. In addition, we utilize the ACES spectroscopic redshift catalogue to assess the quality of photometric redshifts from both the COMBO-17 and Multiwavelength Survey by Yale-Chile imaging surveys of the CDFS. This paper includes data gathered with the 6.5 m Magellan Telescopes located at Las Campanas Observatory, Chile.Hubble Fellow.Spitzer Fellow.

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Greg Walth

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