The Hubble Space Telescope Wide Field Camera 3 Early Release Science data: Panchromatic Faint Object Counts for 0.2-2 microns wavelength

TL;DR

This paper presents the calibration, data reduction, and catalog creation for the Hubble WFC3 ERS observations in the GOODS South field, covering 10 bands from UV to near-IR with high resolution and depth.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed description of the WFC3 ERS data, including procedures for data processing, object catalog generation, and assessment of catalog reliability and completeness.

Findings

High-resolution, multi-band catalogs with depths of AB~26 mag.

Effective star-galaxy separation across 10 bands.

Reliable object detection and classification in deep HST data.

Abstract

We describe the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) Early Release Science (ERS) observations in the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey (GOODS) South field. The new WFC3 ERS data provide calibrated, drizzled mosaics in the UV filters F225W, F275W, and F336W, as well as in the near-IR filters F098M (Ys), F125W (J), and F160W (H) with 1-2 HST orbits per filter. Together with the existing HST Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) GOODS-South mosaics in the BViz filters, these panchromatic 10-band ERS data cover 40-50 square arcmin at 0.2-1.7 {\mu}m in wavelength at 0.07-0.15" FWHM resolution and 0.090" Multidrizzled pixels to depths of AB\simeq 26.0-27.0 mag (5-{\sigma}) for point sources, and AB\simeq 25.5-26.5 mag for compact galaxies. In this paper, we describe: a) the scientific rationale, and the data taking plus reduction procedures of the panchromatic 10-band ERS mosaics; b) the procedure of generating object catalogs across the 10 different ERS filters, and the specific star-galaxy separation techniques used; and c) the reliability and completeness of the object catalogs from the WFC3 ERS mosaics. The excellent 0.07-0.15" FWHM resolution of HST/WFC3 and ACS makes star- galaxy separation straightforward over a factor of 10 in wavelength to AB\simeq 25-26 mag from the UV to the near-IR, respectively.