J and H-band Imaging of AKARI North Ecliptic Pole Survey Field

TL;DR

This paper presents a comprehensive J and H-band near-infrared source catalog for the AKARI North Ecliptic Pole field, filling a critical wavelength gap and enabling diverse astrophysical studies.

Contribution

It provides the first contiguous NIR coverage from optical to MIR for this field, with a large source catalog and high astrometric accuracy, supporting future multi-wavelength research.

Findings

Detected over 200,000 sources in each band.

Achieved 5 sigma depth of ~21.6 mag (J) and ~21.3 mag (H).

Catalog facilitates studies of stellar mass and photometric redshifts.

Abstract

We present the J and H-band source catalog covering the AKARI North Ecliptic Pole field. Filling the gap between the optical data from other follow-up observations and mid-infrared (MIR) data from AKARI, our near-infrared (NIR) data provides contiguous wavelength coverage from optical to MIR. For the J and H-band imaging, we used the FLoridA Multi-object Imaging Near-ir Grism Observational Spectrometer (FLAMINGOS) on the Kitt Peak National Observatory 2.1m telescope covering a 5.1 deg2 area down to a 5 sigma depth of ~21.6 mag and ~21.3 mag (AB) for J and H-band with an astrometric accuracy of 0.14" and 0.17" for 1 sigma in R.A. and Decl. directions, respectively. We detected 208,020 sources for J-band and 203,832 sources for H-band. This NIR data is being used for studies including analysis of the physical properties of infrared sources such as stellar mass and photometric redshifts, and will be a valuable dataset for various future missions.