The Taiwan ECDFS Near-Infrared Survey: Ultra-deep J and Ks Imaging in the Extended Chandra Deep Field-South

TL;DR

This paper presents ultra-deep J and Ks near-infrared imaging of the ECDFS, introduces a novel deconvolution technique for IRAC data, and provides a comprehensive multi-wavelength catalog for high-redshift galaxy studies.

Contribution

The study provides the deepest J and Ks datasets for ECDFS and develops IRACLEAN, a new deconvolution method to improve IRAC flux estimation by reducing blending effects.

Findings

Achieved median 5-sigma limiting magnitudes of 24.5 (J) and 23.9 (Ks) in ECDFS.

Developed IRACLEAN to accurately estimate IRAC fluxes and minimize blending.

Produced a publicly available multi-wavelength catalog combining near-infrared and IRAC data.

Abstract

We present ultra-deep J and Ks imaging observations covering a 30' * 30' area of the Extended Chandra Deep Field-South (ECDFS) carried out by our Taiwan ECDFS Near-Infrared Survey (TENIS). The median 5-sigma limiting magnitudes for all detected objects in the ECDFS reach 24.5 and 23.9 mag (AB) for J and Ks, respectively. In the inner 400 arcmin^2 region where the sensitivity is more uniform, objects as faint as 25.6 and 25.0 mag are detected at 5-sigma. So this is by far the deepest J and Ks datasets available for the ECDFS. To combine the TENIS with the Spitzer IRAC data for obtaining better spectral energy distributions of high-redshift objects, we developed a novel deconvolution technique (IRACLEAN) to accurately estimate the IRAC fluxes. IRACLEAN can minimize the effect of blending in the IRAC images caused by the large point-spread functions and reduce the confusion noise. We applied IRACLEAN to the images from the Spitzer IRAC/MUSYC Public Legacy in the ECDFS survey (SIMPLE) and generated a J+Ks selected multi-wavelength catalog including the photometry of both the TENIS near-infrared and the SIMPLE IRAC data. We publicly release the data products derived from this work, including the J and Ks images and the J+Ks selected multiwavelength catalog.