The Spitzer/IRAC Legacy over the GOODS Fields: Full-Depth 3.6, 4.5, 5.8 and 8.0um Mosaics and Photometry for > 9000 Galaxies at z~3.5-10 from the GOODS Re-ionization Era wide-Area Treasury from Spitzer (GREATS)

TL;DR

This paper presents the deepest wide-area Spitzer/IRAC mosaics over GOODS fields, providing high-sensitivity infrared imaging and photometry for over 9000 high-redshift galaxies, enabling advanced studies of early galaxy formation.

Contribution

It introduces a self-consistent reduction and mosaicking of 12 years of Spitzer data, producing the deepest IRAC images and photometry for high-redshift galaxies in GOODS fields.

Findings

Deep IRAC mosaics reach ~29 AB mag sensitivity.

Photometry for 9192 galaxies at z~3.5-10 is released.

Mosaics enable detailed studies of early galaxy assembly.

Abstract

We present the deepest Spitzer/IRAC $3.6$, $4.5$, $5.8$ and $8.0\mu$m wide-area mosaics yet over the GOODS-N and GOODS-S fields as part of the GOODS Re-ionization Era wide-Area Treasury from Spitzer (GREATS) project. We reduced and mosaicked in a self-consistent way observations taken by the 11 different Spitzer/IRAC programs over the two GOODS fields from 12 years of Spitzer cryogenic and warm mission data. The cumulative depth in the $3.6\mu$m and $4.5\mu$m bands amounts to $\sim 4260$ hr, $\sim 1220$ hr of which are new very deep observations from the GREATS program itself. In the deepest area, the full-depth mosaics reach $\gtrsim200$ hr over an area of $\sim100$ arcmin$^2$, corresponding to a sensitivity of $\sim29$ AB magnitude at $3.6\mu$m ($1\sigma$ for point sources). Archival cryogenic $5.8\mu$m and $8.0\mu$m band data (a cumulative 976 hr) are also included in the release. The mosaics are projected onto the tangential plane of CANDELS/GOODS at a $0.3''$ pixel$^{-1}$ scale. This paper describes the methodology enabling, and the characteristics of, the public release of the mosaic science images, the corresponding coverage maps in the four IRAC bands, and the empirical Point-Spread Functions (PSFs). These PSFs enable mitigation of the source blending effects by taking into account the complex position-dependent variation in the IRAC images. The GREATS data products are in the Infrared Science Archive (IRSA). We also release the deblended $3.6$-to-$8.0\mu$m photometry for $9192$ Lyman-Break galaxies at $z\sim3.5-10$. GREATS will be the deepest mid-infrared imaging until JWST and, as such, constitutes a major resource for characterizing early galaxy assembly.