Draft version October 22, 2018 Preprint typeset using LATEX style emulateapj v. 08/22/09 THE FIRST RELEASE COSMOS OPTICAL AND NEAR-IR DATA AND CATALOG⋆ P. Capak1, H. Aussel2,47, M. Ajiki26, H. J. McCracken2,17, B. Mobasher5, N. Scoville1,2, P. Shopbell1, Y. Taniguchi26,45, D. Thompson1,46, S. Tribiano16,36, S. Sasaki1,26,45, A. W. Blain1, M. Brusa13, C. Carilli 6, A. Comastri35, C. M. Carollo8, P. Cassata12, J. Colbert31, R. S. Ellis1, M. Elvis10, M. Giavalisco5, W. Green1, L. Guzzo12, G. Hasinger13, O. Ilbert4, C. Impey14, K. Jahnke25, J. Kartaltepe4, J-P. Kneib15, J. Koda1, A. Koekemoer5, Y. Komiyama43, A. Leauthaud1,15, O. Lefevre15, S. Lilly8, R. Massey1, S. Miyazaki18, T. Murayama26, T. Nagao 43,44, J. A. Peacock32, A. Pickles 33, C. Porciani8, A. Renzini21,34, J. Rhodes1,22, M. Rich23, M. Salvato1, D. B. Sanders4, C. Scarlata8, D. Schiminovich24, E. Schinnerer25, M. Scodeggio38, K. Sheth1,31, Y. Shioya 45, L. A. M. Tasca15, J. E. Taylor1, L. Yan31, G. Zamorani29 Draft version October 22, 2018 ABSTRACT We present imaging data and photometry for the COSMOS survey in 15 photometric bands between 0.3µm and 2.4µm. These include data taken on the Subaru 8.3m telescope, the KPNO and CTIO 4m telescopes, and the CFHT 3.6m telescope. Special techniques are used to ensure that the relative photometric calibration is better than 1% across the field of view. The absolute photometric accuracy from standard star measurements is found to be 6%. The absolute calibration is corrected using galaxy spectra, providing colors accurate to 2% or better. Stellar and galaxy colors and counts agree well with the expected values. Finally, as the first step in the scientific analysis of these data we construct panchromatic number counts which confirm that both the geometry of the universe and the galaxy population are evolving. Subject headings: cosmology: observations — galaxies: evolution — cosmology: surveys — cosmology: large scale structure of universe ⋆ Based in part on observations with : The NASA/ESA Hubble 15 Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille, BP 8, Traverse du Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, Siphon, 13376 Marseille Cedex 12, France which is operated by AURA Inc, under NASA contract NAS5- 16 American Museum of Natural History, Central Park West at 26555. The Subaru Telescope, which is operated by the National 79th Street, New York, NY 10024 Astronomical Observatory of Japan. The MegaPrime/MegaCam, a 17 Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris, UMR7095 CNRS, Univer- joint project of CFHT and CEA/DAPNIA, at the Canada-France- sit`ePierre et Marie Curie, 98 bis Boulevard Arago, 75014 Paris, Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) which is operated by the National Re- France search Council (NRC) of Canada, the Institute National des Sci- 18 Subaru Telescope, National Astronomical Observatory of ence de l’Univers of the Centre National de la Recherche and the Japan, 650 North Aohoku Place, Hilo, HI 96720 University of Hawaii. The Kitt Peak National Observatory, Cerro 19 Department of Physics and Astronomy, Johns Hopkins Uni- Tololo Inter-American Observatory and the National Optical As- versity, Homewood Campus, Baltimore, MD 21218 tronomy Observatory, which is operated by the Association of Uni- 20 Service d’Astrophysique, CEA/Saclay, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, versities for Research in Astronomy Inc. (AURA) under coopera- France tive agreement with the National Science Foundation. 21 1 European Southern Observatory, Karl-Schwarzschild-Str. 2, California Institute of Technology, MC 105-24, 1200 East Cal- D-85748 Garching, Germany ifornia Boulevard, Pasadena, CA 91125 22 2 Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA 91109 Visiting Astronomer, Univ. Hawaii, 2680 Woodlawn Dr., Hon- 23 Department of Physics and Astronomy, University ofCalifor- olulu, HI, 96822 3 nia, Los Angeles, CA 90095 Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics, Mclennan 24 Department of Astronomy, Columbia University, MC2457, Labs, University of Toronto, 60 St. George St, Room 1403, 550 W. 120 St. New York, NY 10027 arXiv:0704.2430v1 [astro-ph] 19 Apr 2007 Toronto, ON M5S 3H8, Canada 25 4 Max Planck Institut f¨ur Astronomie, K¨onigstuhl 17, Heidel- Institute for Astronomy, 2680 Woodlawn Dr., University of berg, D-69117, Germany Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii, 96822 26 5 Astronomical Institute, Graduate School of Science, Tohoku Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Drive, Bal- University, Aramaki, Aoba, Sendai 980-8578, Japan timore, MD 21218 27 Department of Astronomy, Yale University, P.O. Box 208101, 6 National Radio Astronomy Observatory, P.O. Box 0, Socorro, New Haven, CT 06520-8101 NM 87801-0387 29 7 INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Bologna, via Ranzani 1, Department of Physics, University of Chicago, 5640 South Ellis I-40127 Bologna, Italy Avenue, Chicago, IL 60637 30 8 Max-Planck-Institut f¨ur Astrophysik, D-85748 Garching bei Department of Physics, ETH Zurich, CH-8093 Zurich, Switzer- M¨unchen, Germany land 31 9 Spitzer Science Center, California Institute of Technology, National Optical Astronomy Observatory, P.O. Box 26732, Pasadena, CA 91125 Tucson, AZ 85726 32 10 Institute for Astronomy, University of Edinburgh, Royal Ob- Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden servatory, Blackford Hill, Edinburgh EH9 3HJ, U.K. Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 33 Caltech Optical Observatories, MS 320-47, California Insti- 11 Department of Physics, Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 tute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15213 34 12 Dipartimento di Astronomia, Universit di Padova, vicolo INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera, via Bianchi 46, I- dell’Osservatorio 2, I-35122 Padua, Italy 23807 Merate (LC), Italy 35 13 INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Bologna, via Ranzani 1, Max Planck Institut f¨ur Extraterrestrische Physik, D-85478 40127 Bologna, Italy Garching, Germany 36 14 CUNY Borough of Manhattan Community College, 199 Steward Observatory, University of Arizona, 933 North Chambers St., New York, NY 10007 Cherry Avenue, Tucson, AZ 85721 37 Astrophysical Observatory, City University of New York, Col- 2 data. Such data have been collected at nearly every ob- 1. INTRODUCTION servable wavelength from the X-rays to the radio. The Advances in astronomy are often driven by improved study of large-scale structures places strong calibration accuracy and precision along with increases in sensi- requirements on the COSMOS data; for example spatial tivity and area of the available data. The Canada- variations in photometry and astrometry must be kept to a minimum, typically less than 1% for photometry to France Redshift Survey (CFRS)(Lilly et al. 1995), the ′′ Hawaii Deep Surveys (HDSs) (Cowie et al. 1999), and ensure high quality photometric redshifts and 0.01 for the Hubble Deep Fields (HDFs) (Williams et al. 1996; astrometry to enable measurements of weak lensing and Casertano et al. 2000) were the first deep imaging and correlation functions. Meeting these calibration require- spectroscopic surveys aimed at understanding galaxy for- ments is often difficult as multiple instrument pointings mation and evolution. These discovered the global de- are used to cover the field. cline in star formation at z < 1 and showed that this This paper concentrates on the ground-based data re- was due to star formation occurring in smaller galax- duction, the multi-band optical and near-infrared cata- ies at later times (Lilly et al. 1996; Cowie et al. 1999), log and the steps taken to ensure a high level of pho- a phenomenon often referred to as ”Cosmic Downsiz- tometric consistency. The observing strategy for the ing”. At the same time Steidel et al. (1996, 1999, 2003) Subaru Suprime-Cam observations, which form the bulk used the Lyman-Break Galaxy (LBG) color selection of our ground based data, are discussed separately in technique to identify galaxies at high redshift, dramati- Taniguchi et al. (2007). In addition, the absolute pho- cally improving the efficiency of spectroscopic surveys at tometric and astrometric system used here is defined in z > 3. Other selections such as the BzK (Daddi et al. Aussel et al. (2007). 2004), BX/BM(Adelberger et al. 2004), and DRG (Dis- An overview of the COSMOS project and its goals are tant Red Galaxy) (Franx et al. 2003) have allowed for given in Scoville et al. (2007b). Details of the Hubble efficient sorting of 1 <z< 3 galaxies. Space Telescope (HST) observations, including the Ad- Photometric redshifts are the logical extension of color vanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), the Wide Field Plane- selection by estimating redshifts and spectral energy dis- tary Camera 2 (WFPC2), and the Near Infrared Camera tributions (SEDs) from many photometric bands. Un- and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) are found in like color selection, photometric redshifts take advantage Scoville et al. (2007a). The ACS data acquisition and of all available information, enabling redshift estimates reduction are detailed in Koekemoer et al. (2007), and a along with the age, star formation rate (SFR) and mass. monochromatic catalog based only on the HST-ACS ob- Unfortunately, photometric redshifts are also suscepti- servations is presented in Leauthaud et al. (2007). Ob- ble to systematics in all bands. This increases the cali- servations at other wavelengths consist of: X-ray ob- bration requirements, especially the required photomet- servations with XMM (Hasinger et al. 2007), ultraviolet ric accuracy, for modern cosmological surveys such as (UV) observations with GALEX (Zamojski et al. 2007), the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey (GOODS) mid-infrared observations with the Spitzer Space Tele- (Giavalisco et al. 2004), the Galaxy Evolution from Mor- scope (Sanders et al. 2007), sub-mm observations from phology and Spectral Energy Distributions (GEMS) sur- the Caltech Sub-mm Observatory (CSO) (Aguirre et al. vey (Rix et al. 2004), and the Cosmic Evolution Survey 2007) and Institut de Radioastronomie Millim´etrique or COSMOS (Scoville et al. 2007b). (IRAM) 30m telescope (Bertoldi et al. 2007), and ra- GOODS and GEMS are designed to study evolution of dio observations with the Very Large Array (VLA) galaxies with look back time, whereas COSMOS is de- (Schinnerer et al.