Field selection
Fields were chosen to meet most or all of the following criteria:
- Previous (long) observations with (expensive) space telescopes
- Low 100 micron emission (SFD), reddening, and NH (Burstein-Heiles)
- No (or few) bright sources known (optical/radio)
- High Galactic latitude (
) to reduce stellar density
- Southern accessibility (
, preferably
for
ALMA)
Field choices
Field |
RA |
DEC |
Galactic |
Ecliptic |
E(B-V) |
100 um (MJy/sr) |
NH |
Constellation |
E-HDFS |
22:32:35.6 |
-60:47:12 |
(328,-49) |
(311,-47) |
0.03 |
1.37 |
1.6E+20 |
Indus |
E-CDFS |
03:32:29.0 |
-27:48:47 |
(224,-54) |
(41,-45) |
0.01 |
0.40 |
1.6E+20 |
Fornax |
SDSS 1030+05 |
10:30:27.1 |
05:24:55 |
(239,50) |
(157,-4) |
0.02 |
1.01 |
2.3E+20 |
Leo |
1256+01 |
12:55:40 |
01:07:00 |
(306,64) |
(192,7) |
0.02 |
0.81 |
1.6E+20 |
Virgo |
- Extended CDF-South.
Advantage is that we are building on existing data, in particular
full Chandra coverage, a deep XMM pointing,
deep SIRTF-MIPS GTO coverage, GEMS ACS and COMBO-17 coverage
of wide field (possible collaboration with Rix?).
CDF-S proper (a 10'x15' area) will
be covered extensively by ESO including deep NIR. Our plan is to complete
the rectangular ``annulus'' around the CDF-S with wide NIR pointings.
- Extended HDF-South. We can bootstrap from existing data
in the center, and this field has the advantages of being widely known
and being part of the deep SIRTF GTO project (MIPS & IRAC).
Good RA combination with CDF-South. The HDF-S regions proper are
so small that we will overlap them and use them for recalibration
of photometry and photometric redshifts. The field center in the
table above was chosen to keep a bright star (m=6.8) which lies
quite close to the WFPC2 field off of the CTIO+MOSAIC detectors.
- SDSS 1030+05. Good to have at least one equatorial field.
Strong argument in favor is future possibilities at WIYN (ODI!) and
Gemini North/Subaru/Keck.
Argument against is relatively short visibility during given night,
although this is countered by the fact that we will always
have another of our four fields available at the start/end of the
night. This particular field will soon be well-studied in the
narrow region around the z=6.3 SDSS quasar. So it is not a blank
field for studies at
but is more likely to show interesting bright
objects at that redshift than a blank field. It has also received
105ks of XMM observations that will become public soon.
- 1256+01: ``Castander's window''. In this part of the sky we are
driven Northwards seeking low-dust regions but found the existing
fields to be less than desirable for Far-IR follow-up with SIRTF-MIPS.
A thorough search of the SFD 100 micron dust map yielded a few candidates
for ``Southern dust holes'' which were overlooked by SWIRE and other
groups with the luxury of moving to Northern latitudes near the North
Galactic pole. This means that this is a good field for ALMA follow-up,
and that the vast majority of space-based fields in this range of RA will
not be suitable for ALMA. It also gives us a second equatorial field
to combine with SDSS 1030+05 for Northern observatory applications.