The DECam Local Volume Exploration Survey: Overview and First Data Release

Understand

The DECam Local Volume Exploration survey (DELVE) is a 126-night survey program on the 4-m Blanco Telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile.

• DELVE seeks to understand the characteristics of faint satellite galaxies and other resolved stellar substructures over a range of environments in the Local Volume.
• DELVE will combine new DECam observations with archival DECam data to cover ~15000 deg$^2$ of high-Galactic-latitude (|b| > 10 deg) southern sky to a 5$\sigma$ depth of g,r,i,z ~ 23.5 mag.
• In addition, DELVE will cover a region of ~2200 deg$^2$ around the Magellanic Clouds to a depth of g,r,i ~ 24.5 mag and an area of ~135 deg$^2$ around four Magellanic analogs to a depth of g,i ~ 25.5 mag.