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Title: The DECam Plane Survey: Optical Photometry of Two Billion Objects in the Southern Galactic Plane

Abstract

The DECam Plane Survey is a five-band optical and near-infrared survey of the southern Galactic plane with the Dark Energy Camera at Cerro Tololo. The survey is designed to reach past the main-sequence turn-off of old populations at the distance of the Galactic center through a reddening E(B - V) of 1.5 mag. Typical singleexposure depths are 23.7, 22.8, 22.3, 21.9, and 21.0 mag (AB) in the grizY bands, with seeing around 1'. The footprint covers the Galactic plane with |b| ≲ 4°, 5° > l > -120°. The survey pipeline simultaneously solves for the positions and fluxes of tens of thousands of sources in each image, delivering positions and fluxes of roughly two billion stars with better than 10 mmag precision. Most of these objects are highly reddened and deep in the Galactic disk, probing the structure and properties of the Milky Way and its interstellar medium. The fullyprocessed images and derived catalogs are publicly available.

Authors:
ORCiD logo [1];  [2]; ORCiD logo [3]; ORCiD logo [4]; ORCiD logo [5]; ORCiD logo [4]; ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [6]
  1. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
  2. Kavli Inst. for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, Stanford, CA (United States)
  3. Univ. of Toronto, ON (Canada). Dept. of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Dunlap Inst.; Univ. of Waterloo, ON (Canada). Dept. of Physics and Astronomy
  4. Harvard Univ., Cambridge, MA (United States). Dept. of Physics
  5. Harvard Univ., Cambridge, MA (United States). Dept. of Physics; Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA (United States)
  6. National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO), Tuscon, AZ (United States)
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States). National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC)
Sponsoring Org.:
USDOE Office of Science (SC)
OSTI Identifier:
1524165
Alternate Identifier(s):
OSTI ID: 1530333
Grant/Contract Number:  
AC02-05CH11231
Resource Type:
Accepted Manuscript
Journal Name:
The Astrophysical Journal. Supplement Series (Online)
Additional Journal Information:
Journal Name: The Astrophysical Journal. Supplement Series (Online); Journal Volume: 234; Journal Issue: 2; Journal ID: ISSN 1538-4365
Publisher:
American Astronomical Society/IOP
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Subject:
79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS; catalogs; surveys; techniques: photometric

Citation Formats

Schlafly, E. F., Green, G. M., Lang, D., Daylan, T., Finkbeiner, D. P., Lee, A., Meisner, A. M., Schlegel, D., and Valdes, F. The DECam Plane Survey: Optical Photometry of Two Billion Objects in the Southern Galactic Plane. United States: N. p., 2018. Web. doi:10.3847/1538-4365/aaa3e2.
Schlafly, E. F., Green, G. M., Lang, D., Daylan, T., Finkbeiner, D. P., Lee, A., Meisner, A. M., Schlegel, D., & Valdes, F. The DECam Plane Survey: Optical Photometry of Two Billion Objects in the Southern Galactic Plane. United States. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4365/aaa3e2
Schlafly, E. F., Green, G. M., Lang, D., Daylan, T., Finkbeiner, D. P., Lee, A., Meisner, A. M., Schlegel, D., and Valdes, F. Fri . "The DECam Plane Survey: Optical Photometry of Two Billion Objects in the Southern Galactic Plane". United States. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4365/aaa3e2. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1524165.
@article{osti_1524165,
title = {The DECam Plane Survey: Optical Photometry of Two Billion Objects in the Southern Galactic Plane},
author = {Schlafly, E. F. and Green, G. M. and Lang, D. and Daylan, T. and Finkbeiner, D. P. and Lee, A. and Meisner, A. M. and Schlegel, D. and Valdes, F.},
abstractNote = {The DECam Plane Survey is a five-band optical and near-infrared survey of the southern Galactic plane with the Dark Energy Camera at Cerro Tololo. The survey is designed to reach past the main-sequence turn-off of old populations at the distance of the Galactic center through a reddening E(B - V) of 1.5 mag. Typical singleexposure depths are 23.7, 22.8, 22.3, 21.9, and 21.0 mag (AB) in the grizY bands, with seeing around 1'. The footprint covers the Galactic plane with |b| ≲ 4°, 5° > l > -120°. The survey pipeline simultaneously solves for the positions and fluxes of tens of thousands of sources in each image, delivering positions and fluxes of roughly two billion stars with better than 10 mmag precision. Most of these objects are highly reddened and deep in the Galactic disk, probing the structure and properties of the Milky Way and its interstellar medium. The fullyprocessed images and derived catalogs are publicly available.},
doi = {10.3847/1538-4365/aaa3e2},
journal = {The Astrophysical Journal. Supplement Series (Online)},
number = 2,
volume = 234,
place = {United States},
year = {Fri Feb 09 00:00:00 EST 2018},
month = {Fri Feb 09 00:00:00 EST 2018}
}

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Figures / Tables:

Figure 1 Figure 1: DECaPS footprint. The figure shows the number density of sources that are detected in at least three bands and are brighter than 20th mag in $r$. Dark regions have the most stars. Major dust clouds are prominent, significantly reducing the number of stars observed behind them. Prominent dustmore » clouds include the Pipe Nebula at (1°, 4°) and the Vela Molecular Ridge cloud C at (−95°, 1°. 5; Murphy & May 1991). White corresponds to three thousand sources per deg2, while black corresponds to three million sources per deg2 (log scale).« less

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