CANDELS: The Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey - The Hubble Space Telescope Observations, Imaging Data Products and Mosaics

TL;DR

This paper details the data products, reduction procedures, and mosaics from the CANDELS survey, which uses Hubble Space Telescope imaging to study galaxy and black hole evolution at high redshifts.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive description of the HST imaging data, reduction techniques, and data products for the first large-scale near-infrared extragalactic survey, enabling future scientific analyses.

Findings

High-quality mosaics for multiple fields released

Advanced correction methods for instrumental effects implemented

Extensive multi-wavelength imaging data available for galaxy evolution studies

Abstract

This paper describes the Hubble Space Telescope imaging data products and data reduction procedures for the Cosmic Assembly Near-IR Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey (CANDELS). This survey is designed to document the evolution of galaxies and black holes at $z\sim1.5-8$, and to study Type Ia SNe beyond $z>1.5$. Five premier multi-wavelength sky regions are selected, each with extensive multiwavelength observations. The primary CANDELS data consist of imaging obtained in the Wide Field Camera 3 / infrared channel (WFC3/IR) and UVIS channel, along with the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). The CANDELS/Deep survey covers \sim125 square arcminutes within GOODS-N and GOODS-S, while the remainder consists of the CANDELS/Wide survey, achieving a total of \sim800 square arcminutes across GOODS and three additional fields (EGS, COSMOS, and UDS). We summarize the observational aspects of the survey as motivated by the scientific goals and present a detailed description of the data reduction procedures and products from the survey. Our data reduction methods utilize the most up to date calibration files and image combination procedures. We have paid special attention to correcting a range of instrumental effects, including CTE degradation for ACS, removal of electronic bias-striping present in ACS data after SM4, and persistence effects and other artifacts in WFC3/IR. For each field, we release mosaics for individual epochs and eventual mosaics containing data from all epochs combined, to facilitate photometric variability studies and the deepest possible photometry. A more detailed overview of the science goals and observational design of the survey are presented in a companion paper.