SMASH: Survey of the MAgellanic Stellar History
- National Optical Astronomy Observatory, 950 North Cherry Avenue, Tucson, AZ 85719 (United States)
- Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, National Optical Astronomy Observatory, Casilla 603, La Serena (Chile)
- Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218 (United States)
- Steward Observatory, University of Arizona, 933 North Cherry Avenue, Tucson AZ, 85721 (United States)
- Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 2611 (Australia)
- National Center for Supercomputing Applications, 1205 West Clark Street, Urbana, IL 61801 (United States)
- Department of Astronomy, University of Michigan, 1085 S. University Avenue, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1107 (United States)
- Departamento de Astronomía, Universidad de Chile, Camino del Observatorio 1515, Las Condes, Santiago (Chile)
- Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, La Laguna, Tenerife (Spain)
- Université de Strasbourg, CNRS, Observatoire astronomique de Strasbourg, UMR 7550, F-67000 Strasbourg (France)
- Max-Planck-Institut für Astrophysik, Karl-Schwarzschild-Str. 1, D-85748 Garching (Germany)
The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds are unique local laboratories for studying the formation and evolution of small galaxies in exquisite detail. The Survey of the MAgellanic Stellar History (SMASH) is an NOAO community Dark Energy Camera (DECam) survey of the Clouds mapping 480 deg{sup 2} (distributed over ∼2400 square degrees at ∼20% filling factor) to ∼24th mag in ugriz . The primary goals of SMASH are to identify low surface brightness stellar populations associated with the stellar halos and tidal debris of the Clouds, and to derive spatially resolved star formation histories. Here, we present a summary of the survey, its data reduction, and a description of the first public Data Release (DR1). The SMASH DECam data have been reduced with a combination of the NOAO Community Pipeline, the PHOTRED automated point-spread-function photometry pipeline, and custom calibration software. The astrometric precision is ∼15 mas and the accuracy is ∼2 mas with respect to the Gaia reference frame. The photometric precision is ∼0.5%–0.7% in griz and ∼1% in u with a calibration accuracy of ∼1.3% in all bands. The median 5 σ point source depths in ugriz are 23.9, 24.8, 24.5, 24.2, and 23.5 mag. The SMASH data have already been used to discover the Hydra II Milky Way satellite, the SMASH 1 old globular cluster likely associated with the LMC, and extended stellar populations around the LMC out to R ∼ 18.4 kpc. SMASH DR1 contains measurements of ∼100 million objects distributed in 61 fields. A prototype version of the NOAO Data Lab provides data access and exploration tools.
- OSTI ID:
- 22663120
- Journal Information:
- Astronomical Journal (Online), Vol. 154, Issue 5; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1538-3881
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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