The Red-sequence Cluster Survey-2 (RCS-2): survey details and photometric catalog construction

TL;DR

The RCS-2 survey is a large, multi-color imaging project designed to detect galaxy clusters up to redshift 1, providing high-precision photometric catalogs to study cluster evolution and cosmology.

Contribution

This paper details the survey design, data acquisition, reduction, and calibration methods, achieving high-precision photometry and deep imaging over 1000 square degrees.

Findings

Achieved <0.03 mag color calibration accuracy

Reached 5 sigma limiting magnitudes of griz = [24.4, 24.3, 23.7, 22.8]

Provided a uniform, deep imaging dataset for galaxy cluster studies

Abstract

The second Red-sequence Cluster Survey (RCS-2) is a ~1000 square degree, multi-color imaging survey using the square-degree imager, MegaCam, on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT). It is designed to detect clusters of galaxies over the redshift range 0.1<~z<~1. The primary aim is to build a statistically complete, large (~10^4) sample of clusters, covering a sufficiently long redshift baseline to be able to place constraints on cosmological parameters via the evolution of the cluster mass function. Other main science goals include building a large sample of high surface brightness, strongly gravitationally-lensed arcs associated with these clusters, and an unprecedented sample of several tens of thousands of galaxy clusters and groups, spanning a large range of halo mass, with which to study the properties and evolution of their member galaxies. This paper describes the design of the survey and the methodology for acquiring, reducing and calibrating the data for the production of high-precision photometric catalogs. We describe the method for calibrating our griz imaging data using the colors of the stellar locus and overlapping Two-Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS) photometry. This yields an absolute accuracy of <0.03 mag on any color and ~0.05 mag in the r-band magnitude, verified with respect to the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). RCS-2 reaches average 5 sigma point source limiting magnitudes of griz = [24.4, 24.3, 23.7, 22.8], approximately 1-2 magnitudes deeper than the SDSS. Due to the queue-scheduled nature of the observations, the data are highly uniform and taken in excellent seeing, mostly FWHM<~0.7" in the r-band. In addition to the main science goals just described, these data form the basis for a number of other planned and ongoing projects (including the WiggleZ survey), making RCS-2 an important next-generation imaging survey. [abridged]