THE 2012 HUBBLE ULTRA DEEP FIELD (UDF12): OBSERVATIONAL OVERVIEW

By A. Koekemoer, Richard S. Ellis, R. McLure, J. Dunlop, Brant Robertson, Yoshiaki Ono, M. Schenker, M. Ouchi, R. Bowler, A. B. Rogers and 8 more. 2012

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We present the 2012 Hubble Ultra Deep Field campaign (UDF12), a large 128 orbit Cycle 19 Hubble Space Telescope program aimed at extending previous Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3)/IR observations of the UDF by quadrupling the exposure time in the F105W filter, imaging in an additional F140W filter, and extending the F160W exposure time by 50%, as well as adding an extremely deep parallel field with the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) in the F814W filter with a total exposure time of 128 orbits. The principal scientific goal of this project is to determine whether galaxies reionized the universe; our observations are designed to provide a robust determination of the star formation density at z ≳ 8, improve measurements of the ultraviolet continuum slope at z ∼ 7–8, facilitate the construction of new samples of z ∼ 9–10 candidates, and enable the detection of sources up to z ∼ 12. For this project we committed to combining these and other WFC3/IR imaging observations of the UDF area into a single homogeneous dataset to provide the deepest near-infrared observations of the sky. In this paper we present the observational overview of the project and describe the procedures used in reducing the data as well as the final products that were produced. We present the details of several special procedures that we implemented to correct calibration issues in the data for both the WFC3/IR observations of the main UDF field and our deep 128 orbit ACS/WFC F814W parallel field image, including treatment for persistence, correction for time-variable sky backgrounds, and astrometric alignment to an accuracy of a few milliarcseconds. We release the full, combined mosaics comprising a single, unified set of mosaics of the UDF, providing the deepest near-infrared blank-field view of the universe currently achievable, reaching magnitudes as deep as AB ∼ 30 mag in the near-infrared, and yielding a legacy dataset on this field.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/fd92b3eddabafe005c2979a6a75842eaf09c1e93

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Citations in the corpus

The JWST Early Release Observations (2022, methodology): “…Exposure Time Calculator (5σ), aimed at matching the depth of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field as observed with WFC3/IR (HUDF12/XDF: Ellis et al. 2013; Koekemoer et al. 2013; Illingworth et al. 2013), and surpassing by at least a factor of 10 the depth of Spitzer IRAC channel 1+2 imaging for…”
Spectroscopic confirmation of four metal-poor galaxies at z = 10.3–13.2 (2022, background): “In the UDF12 survey 30,31 , deep Hubble imaging revealed the object drops out in JH140 band imaging.”
THE EVOLUTION OF THE GALAXY STELLAR MASS FUNCTION AT z = 4–8: A STEEPENING LOW-MASS-END SLOPE WITH INCREASING REDSHIFT (2015, methodology): “A complete description of these data is presented by Koekemoer et al. (2011, 2013).”
A deep ALMA image of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (2016, methodology): “…of the UDF09 campaign (Oesch et al. 2010; Bouwens et al. 2010; Illingworth et al. 2013) followed by the UDF12 programme (Ellis et al. 2013; Koekemoer et al. 2013; Dunlop et al. 2013), has delivered the deepest near-infrared imaging ever achieved (reaching 30 AB mag, 5-σ) over an area of…”
The z = 9-10 galaxy population in the Hubble Frontier Fields and CLASH surveys: the z = 9 luminosity function and further evidence for a smooth decline in ultraviolet luminosity density at z≥ 8 (2016, methodology): “…population was undertaken by Ellis et al. (2013) and McLure et al. (2013), based on the small sample of z ' 9 galaxies uncovered within the HUDF12 dataset (which featured the key ultra-deep Y105, J125, J140 &H160 imaging necessary to identify robust z ' 9 galaxy candidates; Koekemoer et al. 2013).”
LINE-EMITTING GALAXIES BEYOND A REDSHIFT OF 7: AN IMPROVED METHOD FOR ESTIMATING THE EVOLVING NEUTRALITY OF THE INTERGALACTIC MEDIUM (2014, methodology): “The UDF 2012 dataset(Koekemoer et al. 2013) (GO 12498, PI; Ellis) offers many distinct advantages for this first application of our method.”
THE EVOLUTION OF THE GALAXY REST-FRAME ULTRAVIOLET LUMINOSITY FUNCTION OVER THE FIRST TWO BILLION YEARS (2014, methodology): “The total number of sources in our artificially dimmed catalog was 4066 in the Deep fields and 1254 in the HUDF field.”
The mass evolution of the first galaxies: stellar mass functions and star formation rates at 4 < z < 7 in the CANDELS GOODS-South field (2014, methodology): “For the z ≈ 7 LF, we show the estimate of Bouwens et al. (2011) as well as the recent results of McLure et al. (2013) and Schenker et al. (2013a) which make use of the deeper UDF12 observations (Koekemoer et al. 2013) to probe fainter MUV than we are able to.”
New redshift z ≃ 9 galaxies in the Hubble Frontier Fields: implications for early evolution of the UV luminosity density (2014, methodology): “This technique accurately accounts for the additional noise introduced by a variety of systematic effects which are not captured by a simple noise model, or even by the rms maps produced by the DRIZZLE data reduction algorithm (e.g. Koekemoer et al. 2013).”
The galaxy stellar mass function at 3.5 ≤z ≤ 7.5 in the CANDELS/UDS, GOODS-South, and HUDF fields (2015, methodology): “This data set does not include the two parallel fields of the HUDF09 programme, nor the HUDF12 data (Koekemoer et al. 2013).”
THE HST EXTREME DEEP FIELD (XDF): COMBINING ALL ACS AND WFC3/IR DATA ON THE HUDF REGION INTO THE DEEPEST FIELD EVER (2013, background): “Both the XDF ACS and XDF WFC3/IR images are aligned with the original HUDF within a few mas, or less than 1/10 px. • The WFC3/IR photometry matches within 0.000- 0.003 mag (mean difference 0.002 mag) of the HUDF12 release (Koekemoer et al 2013) with a 1′′ diameter aperture.”
The MUSE Hubble Ultra Deep Field Survey: I. Survey description, data reduction and source detection (2017, methodology): “…was augmented a few years later with far ultraviolet images from ACS/SBC (Voyer et al. 2009) and with deep near ultraviolet (Teplitz et al. 2013) and near infrared imaging (Oesch et al. 2010; Bouwens et al. 2011; Ellis et al. 2013; Koekemoer et al. 2013) using the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3).”
Fluctuating feedback-regulated escape fraction of ionizing radiation in low-mass, high-redshift galaxies (2017, background): “With the advent of extremely deep surveys such as the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (UDF) survey (Koekemoer et al. 2013), the total production of ionizing photons from star-forming galaxies can be constrained by observations.”
Modelling and interpreting spectral energy distributions of galaxies with BEAGLE (2016, background): “…(imaging in Beckwith et al. 2006), and the near-infrared ones in four WFC3 bands, F105W, F125W, F140W and F160W, from the UDF09, UDF12 (Oesch et al. 2010a,b; Bouwens et al. 2011; Ellis et al. 2013; Koekemoer et al. 2013) and CANDELS GOODS-S programs (Grogin et al. 2011; Koekemoer et al. 2011).”
UVUDF: ULTRAVIOLET THROUGH NEAR-INFRARED CATALOG AND PHOTOMETRIC REDSHIFTS OF GALAXIES IN THE HUBBLE ULTRA DEEP FIELD (2015, methodology): “…mission added the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) to HST’s instrumentation, enabling very deep near-infrared (NIR) (UDF09 and 2 UDF12; Oesch et al. 2010c,b; Bouwens et al. 2011b; Koekemoer et al. 2013; Ellis et al. 2013) and nearultraviolet (NUV) (UVUDF; Teplitz et al. 2013) observations of the UDF.”