S-CANDELS: The Spitzer-Cosmic Assembly Near-Infrared Deep Extragalactic Survey. Survey Design, Photometry, and Deep IRAC Source Counts

Understand

The Spitzer-Cosmic Assembly Deep Near-Infrared Extragalactic Legacy Survey (S-CANDELS; PI G.

• Fazio) is a Cycle 8 Exploration Program designed to detect galaxies at very high redshifts (z > 5).
• To mitigate the effects of cosmic variance and also to take advantage of deep coextensive coverage in multiple bands by the Hubble Space Telescope Multi-Cycle Treasury Program CANDELS, S-CANDELS was carried out within five widely separated extragalactic fields: the UKIDSS Ultra-Deep Survey, the Extended Chandra Deep Field South, COSMOS, the HST Deep Field North, and the Extended Groth Strip.
• S-CANDELS builds upon the existing coverage of these fields from the Spitzer Extended Deep Survey (SEDS) by increasing the integration time from 12 hours to a total of 50 hours but within a smaller area, 0.16 square degrees.