COSMOS Observations: Hubble Space Telescope
The COSMOS HST Treasury project was allocated 640 orbits in Cycles 12 & 13 to image a square 2 square degree field with the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). Per instructions from the Telescope Allocation Committee (TAC), 50 orbits were given over to an outside group to pursue high-redshift supernovae. The remaining 590 orbits have been used to observe the COSMOS field.
Single orbit exposures with ACS using the F814W filter:
- imaging at 0.05 arcsec resolution
- excellent sensitivity -- IAB = 27.2 mag (10 sigma)
The ACS imaging is the central cornerstone of the COSMOS survey to study galaxy and large scale structure evolution. ACS provides morphologies of over 2 million galaxies at < 100 pc resolution.
Each orbit has 4 dithered exposures in F814W for cosmic ray and bad pixel rejection and to cover the gap between the two ACS CCD arrays.
Over Cycle 12 and 13, the entire 2 degree field was mosaiced starting from the center to the perimeter.
Parallel data
Two HST instruments were used in parallel with the ACS observations: NICMOS and WFPC2. These observations also exploit the excellent spatial resolution of HST, although neither provides contiguous coverage of the entire field.- NICMOS camera 3 in F160W
(covers ~ 7% of the COSMOS field to 24 mag AB ) - WFPC2 in F300W (U band) and F450W (B band)
Data Products
Each of the 590 fields consists of 4 exposures, which are calibrated and combined at STScI into a single image for each field using the MultiDrizzle software.
The work on the HST/ACS data products is led by Anton Koekemoer at STScI.
For each of the fields, the combined MultiDrizzled images are released through the COSMOS archives at IRSA and MAST within 1 year of the cycle completions. The first release of the Cycle 12 data was on January 11, 2005. A public release of the processed Cycle 13 data is planned for January, 2006.
Additional information on the HST/ACS observations can be found on the COSMOS HST/ACS website.