ESO imaging survey: infrared deep public survey

¹ Dark Cosmology Centre, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Juliane Maries Vej 30, 2100 Copenhagen, Denmark e-mail: lisbeth@dark-cosmology.dk
² Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur, BP 4229, 06304 Nice Cedex 4, France
³ European Southern Observatory, Karl-Schwarzschild-Str. 2, 85748 Garching b. München, Germany
⁴ Tècniques d'Avantguarda, Avda. Carlemany 75, 700 Les Escaldes, Andorra
⁵ Observatório Nacional, Rua Gen. José Cristino 77, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brasil
⁶ Universidade Estadual de Feira de Santana, Campus Universitário, Feira de Santana, BA, Brazil
⁷ Dipartimento di Astronomia, Universita' di Bologna, via Ranzani 1, 40126 Bologna, Italy
⁸ INAF – Istituto di Radioastronomia, via Gobetti 101, 40129 Bologna, Italy
⁹ Laboratoire d'astrophysique de Marseille, Traverse du Siphon, BP 8, 13376 Marseille Cedex 12, France
¹⁰ Argelander-Institut für Astronomie, University of Bonn, Auf dem Hügel 71, 53121 Bonn, Germany
¹¹ INAF – Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste, via G.B. Tiepolo 11, 34131 Trieste, Italy
¹² INAF – Astronomical Observatory of Padova, Vicolo dell'Osservatorio 5, 35122 Padova, Italy

Received: 14 February 2006
Accepted: 30 May 2006

Abstract

This paper is part of the series presenting the final results obtained by the ESO Imaging Survey (EIS) project. It presents new J and K_s data obtained from observations conducted at the ESO 3.5 m New Technology Telescope (NTT) using the SOFI camera. These data were taken as part of the Deep Public Survey (DPS) carried out by the ESO Imaging Survey program, significantly extending the earlier optical/infrared EIS-DEEP survey presented in a previous paper of this series. The DPS-IR survey comprises two observing strategies: shallow K_s observations providing nearly full coverage of pointings with complementary multi-band (in general ) optical data obtained using ESO's wide-field imager (WFI) and deeper J and K_s observations of the central parts of these fields. Currently, the DPS-IR survey provides a coverage of roughly 2.1 square degrees (~300 SOFI pointings) in K_s with 0.63 square degrees to fainter magnitudes and also covered in J, over three independent regions of the sky. The goal of the present paper is to briefly describe the observations, the data reduction procedures, and to present the final survey products which include fully calibrated pixel-maps and catalogs extracted from them. The astrometric solution with an estimated accuracy of  is based on the USNO catalog and limited only by the accuracy of the reference catalog. The final stacked images presented here number 89 and 272, in J and K_s, respectively, the latter reflecting the larger surveyed area. The J and K_s images were taken with a median seeing of and . The images reach a median  limiting magnitude of as measured within an aperture of 2´´, while the corresponding limiting magnitude in is ~21.41 and ~22.16 mag for the shallow and deep strategies. Although some spatial variation due to varying observing conditions is observed, overall the observed limiting magnitudes are consistent with those originally proposed. The quality of the data has been assessed by comparing the measured magnitude of sources at the bright end directly with those reported by the 2MASS survey and at the faint end by comparing the counts of galaxies and stars with those of other surveys to comparable depth and to model predictions. The final science-grade catalogs together with the astrometrically and photometrically calibrated co-added images are available at CDS.