HDUV: The Hubble Deep UV Legacy Survey

TL;DR

The HDUV survey provides the deepest high-resolution UV imaging over ~100 arcmin2 in two filters, enabling advanced studies of faint star-forming galaxies, ionizing photon escape, and galaxy evolution at z~1-3.

Contribution

It offers the first deep, wide-area UV imaging data in the GOODS/CANDELS fields, combining new and archival data with a novel alignment approach.

Findings

Deep UV images reach 27.5-28.0 mag (5sigma) in 0.4" apertures.

Provides a complete sample of faint star-forming galaxies at z~1-3.

Enables studies of ionizing photon escape and galaxy structural evolution.

Abstract

We present the Hubble Deep UV Legacy Survey (HDUV), a 132 orbit imaging program with the WFC3/UVIS camera onboard the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). The HDUV extends and builds on the few previous UV imaging surveys in the two GOODS/CANDELS-Deep fields to provide deep images over a total area of ~100 arcmin2 in the two filters F275W and F336W. Our release also includes all the F275W imaging data taken by the CANDELS survey, which were aligned using a novel approach and combined with the HDUV survey data. By reaching depths of 27.5-28.0 mag (5sigma, in 0.4" apertures), these are the deepest high-resolution UV data over such a large area taken to date. Such unique UV imaging enables a wide range of science by the community. Among the main goals of the HDUV survey are: (1) provide a complete sample of faint star-forming galaxies at z~1-3, (2) constrain the ionizing photon escape fraction from galaxies at z~2-3, and (3) track the build-up of bulges and the disappearance of clumpy disk galaxies through reliable internal stellar population properties at sub-kpc resolution out to z~3. The addition of the HDUV data further enhances the legacy value of the two GOODS/CANDELS-Deep fields, which now include deep 11-band HST imaging as well as very deep ancillary data from X-ray to radio, enabling unique multi-wavelength studies. Here, we provide an overview of the survey design, describe the data reduction, and highlight a few basic analyses on the images which are released to the community as high level science products via the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST).