Deep Extragalactic VIsible Legacy Survey (DEVILS): Consistent multi-wavelength photometry for the DEVILS regions (COSMOS, XMMLSS & ECDFS)

TL;DR

The paper presents a new, consistent multi-wavelength photometric catalog for the DEVILS survey, combining data from various telescopes to improve galaxy property measurements across three deep extragalactic fields.

Contribution

It introduces a uniform, high-quality photometric catalog using the ProFound package, integrating diverse datasets for accurate galaxy property analysis.

Findings

Photometry is consistent or better than previous methods.

Produces superior total source photometry for galaxy analysis.

Enables improved measurements of galaxy properties like stellar mass and star formation.

Abstract

The Deep Extragalactic VIsible Legacy Survey (DEVILS) is an ongoing high-completeness, deep spectroscopic survey of $\sim$60,000 galaxies to Y$<$21.2 mag, over $\sim$6 deg2 in three well-studied deep extragalactic fields: D10 (COSMOS), D02 (XMM-LSS) and D03 (ECDFS). Numerous DEVILS projects all require consistent, uniformly-derived and state-of-the-art photometric data with which to measure galaxy properties. Existing photometric catalogues in these regions either use varied photometric measurement techniques for different facilities/wavelengths leading to inconsistencies, older imaging data and/or rely on source detection and photometry techniques with known problems. Here we use the ProFound image analysis package and state-of-the-art imaging datasets (including Subaru-HSC, VST-VOICE, VISTA-VIDEO and UltraVISTA-DR4) to derive matched-source photometry in 22 bands from the FUV to 500{\mu}m. This photometry is found to be consistent, or better, in colour-analysis to previous approaches using fixed-size apertures (which are specifically tuned to derive colours), but produces superior total source photometry, essential for the derivation of stellar masses, star-formation rates, star-formation histories, etc. Our photometric catalogue is described in detail and, after internal DEVILS team projects, will be publicly released for use by the broader scientific community.