Modern astrophysics depends on multi-wavelength data for a comprehensive picture of galaxy formation and evolution. For this reason extragalactic astronomy has focused on a small number of well-studied fields that have coverage across the electromagnetic spectrum. The COSMOS field is the premier degree scale field on the sky with some of the deepest possible data on >1 degree scales.
The field was chosen to have low backgrounds at all wavelengths, to be free of bright sources at all wavelengths, and to be visible from both hemispheres on the ground, ensuring ultra-deep imaging, large numbers of spectra, and easy follow-up observations.
Here we summarize the data that exists:
Chandra/XMM
COSMOS has been covered to 75 ksec depth with XMM (6x10-15 erg cm-2 s-1 soft band), and the entire COSMOS field has been covered by Chandra to 160 ksec depth (2.2x10-16 erg cm-2 s-1 soft band).
GALEX
COSMOS is in the GALEX-DIS, reaching FUV=25.5, NUV=26 magAB.
Spectroscopy and Spectroscopic follow-up
COSMOS has extensive spectroscopic data with over 250,000 spectra targeting over 100,000 unique objects. Major surveys include zCOSMOS (~20K galaxies at z < 1.2 and ~3000 at 2 < z < 3.5), VUDS (4000 at 2.5 < z < 6.5), Keck (~10,000 including 500 at z > 4), and FMOS (>1500 at z < 2) efforts. Along with numerous smaller programs.
In ~2024, the Subaru Prime Focus Spectrograph (PFS, Ellis et al. 2012) will begin conducting a deep spectroscopic survey reaching z′~24 magAB for ~250k galaxies, and going ~1 mag deeper covering ~20k z > 4 systems.
HST
The entire COSMOS field is covered by HST with ACS-F814W band and the central 0.05 deg2 region is covered by the CANDELS survey in F606W, F125W, and F160W.
Optical/NIR Imaging
COSMOS is the target of ultra-deep HSC imaging in the g,r,i,z, and y bands and deep u band imaging with both CFHT and DECcam. Subaru-Suprime-Cam has imaged the field in the 0.4-1 μm range with a combination of broad, intermediate, and narrow band filters reaches 25.5-27 mag AB. The deepest NIR imaging possible from the ground reaching ~24.5−26.5 mag AB using 1200h of VISTA on the central 1.5 sq deg, and ~24 AB over the full field using UKIRT and CFHT.
Mid-IR and Sub-mm
COSMOS has deep Spitzer MIPS 24 μm coverage reaching ~20 μJy rms, and are covered by Herschel-PACS to 6-12 mJy 5σ at 100 and 160 μm and Herschel-SPIRE to 8-13 mJy 5σ at 250,350, and 500 μm. AzTEC, MAMBO, GISMO, LaBOCA, and SCUBA2 have also observed both fields at 0.4-2 mm reaching an rms of 2-9 mJy. Furthermore over 500 ALMA pointings are available in COSMOS.
Radio
COSMOS has 10 μJy rms at 20 cm from the VLA and 2 μJy rms at 10 cm from the JVLA. The COSMOS field has also been covered by GMRT at 60 cm and the VLA at 90 cm to 60 μJy and 0.5 mJy rms respectively.
LSST
COSMOS has been announced as an LSST deep drilling field (R~28.5 ABmag), so the optical data on these fields will only deepen and temporal monitoring will continue in the next decade.
Euclid
COSMOS is a calibration field for Euclid and will be observed with high-priority. It will be covered to 26–26.5 mag AB in the Y, J, and H bands and receive high-resolution, deep optical imaging in the optical similar to what is currently available in COSMOS.
ELTs
COSMOS is visible to all the 20−39 m telescopes that will be operating in Hawaii and Chile by the end of the decade, enabling spectroscopy to the 27-28 mag AB depth of the HSC data.
JWST
The COSMOS field is one of the premier fields to be observed with JWST, including the largest Cycle 1 program COSMOS-Web, the deep coverage over the CANDELS region from PRIMER, and several other GO programs.
