THERE ARE LONG, NARROW COSMIC PROBES SUCH AS THE HUBBLE DEEP FIELD, AND THERE ARE

WIDE-AREA SURVE YS THAT COVER BROAD SWATHS OF THE CELESTIAL SPHERE TO SHALLOW DEPTHS.
NOW ASTRONOMERS ARE ABOUT TO FINISH A PROJECT THAT BRIDGES THE GAP BET WEEN THEM.

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September 2001 Sky & Telescope

2001 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

1 3. S C A L E : 1
Found deep within this small patch of sky are a beautiful face-on spiral galaxy, an interacting system with a
long tidal tail, and a distant galaxy cluster.

BY DAVID T Y TELL

hen 2,000 of the nations professional astronomers gathered in San

Diego last January for the 197th meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS), looming large in the display area was a poster. A
very big poster. Standing more than 2 meters (8 feet) tall was a
mural-size square speckled from edge to edge with a sea of stars, quasars, and galaxies
of all shapes, sizes, and colors. When you moved in close, you could see that the
smallest images on it were hardly more than a millimeter wide. The huge sky image
represented the first public data release of the National Optical Astronomy Observatorys Deep Wide-Field Survey (NDWFS), one of the many ambitious cosmic imaging surveys that have recently been completed or are now under way. And amazingly,
the image was only 7 percent of the completed mosaic.
Much like the famous Hubble Deep
Fields (S&T: May 1996, page 48) and the
Chandra Deep Fields (June issue, page
20), as well as such wide-sky surveys as the
Sloan Digital Sky Survey (see page 20), the
Two Degree Field Galaxy Redshift Survey
(2dF; August issue, page 20), and the Two
Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS; July issue,
page 34), the NDWFS is designed to colSCALE: 10

Facing page: This view represents just

7 percent of the NOAO Deep WideField Survey. Nearly completed, the
survey comprises two fields, each covering 9 square degrees near opposite
galactic poles. Most of the detail in
this image is invisible at this tiny scale;
more than 250,000 galaxies have been
identified in this one frame alone. The
white boxes show areas enlarged
above and on the next two pages. Unless otherwise noted, all images are by
B. Jannuzi, A. Dey, M. Brown, G. Tiede,
NDWFS team/AURA/NOAO/NSF.

lect data lots and lots of data that astronomers can put to countless uses. In
particular, by measuring and analyzing
vast numbers of galaxies and quasars, astronomers expect to track and understand
the evolution of the universe.
These cutting-edge imaging projects
divide into two types: those that look
very deep and those that look very wide.
The Hubble Deep Fields go as faint as
30th magnitude, recording galaxy formation back to very early epochs. But they
lack breadth. Such so-called pencil-beam
surveys focus on sky areas so narrow
(about 2 arcminutes across in the case of
the HDFs) that processes such as galaxycluster formation and evolution are impossible to see. Conversely, the Sloan
Digital Sky Survey will cover an astonishing 10,000 square degrees, almost a
quarter of the celestial sphere. But it goes
only as deep as 23rd magnitude, so it can
measure only large-scale structures in
relatively recent epochs.
NDWFS is the compromise that astronomers have been longing for. Were
2001 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

15h

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e o

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pp

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CANES
VENATICI
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NOAO Deep
Wide-Field Survey

Arcturus

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helping to fill in the gap between those

two extremes, says Buell Jannuzi, coprincipal investigator on the project.
The NDWFS is large, covering a 3by-3 square of sky in Botes near the
north galactic pole and a second, 4.5by-2 strip on roughly the opposite side
of the sky in Cetus. If the 3 square were
made into a poster at the scale of the one
displayed at the AAS meeting, it would
stand more than 6 meters (21 feet) tall.
The brightnesses of an estimated 5 million galaxies in the two fields are being
measured in two visual colors and four
near-infrared colors, to a depth of 26th
magnitude in the visual and 21st at the
longer infrared wavelengths. Details are resolved to slightly better than 1 arcsecond.
Sky & Telescope September 2001

43

The surveys primary goal is to measure the evolution of large-scale structure

starting as far back as redshift 4 (about
12 billion light-years distant, dating from
when the universe was about 11 percent
of its present age). We are mainly interested in large-scale structure and galaxy
evolution, explains Jannuzi. We needed
to survey a volume large enough to
measure the largest structures.
The imaging at the three shortest
wavelengths is being done by the NOAOs
two 4-meter workhorses: the Mayall Telescope on Kitt Peak in Arizona and the
Blanco 4-meter at the Cerro Tololo InterAmerican Observatory in Chile. New
wide-field CCD cameras on these telescopes made the survey possible; the 64megapixel visible-light cameras cover a
0.6 square in a single shot, a gigantic
field for such a large scope. Infrared observations are being carried out with a
2.1-meter scope also on Kitt Peak.
The 35 astronomers on the NDWFS
team are currently wrapping up observations and will soon be putting the finish-

4. S C A L E : 1
The NOAO Deep Wide-Field Survey is randomly scattered with new and interesting
objects. Near the center of this image is a
pair of interacting galaxies.

ing touches on the data processing. The

images and measurements should be released by spring 2003 and will be accessible to the public. We are releasing the
data as quickly as we have it reduced,
says Jannuzi. The catalogs are being prepared and vetted to clean up all problems before the official release.
Astronomers have already been rooting around in the 1-square-degree fragment of the NDWFS data released in
January. One team, led by Sangeeta Malhotra (Johns Hopkins University) and
James Rhoads (STScI), used the data set
as a jumping-off point for their own
deep survey looking for hydrogen emission from highly redshifted galaxies.
There was a good synergy by placing
our field in theirs, says Rhoads. This

search, the Large Area Lyman-Alpha Survey, found 150 young, highly energetic
starburst galaxies in a half-degree (fullMoon-size) patch of sky. These galaxies,
at redshifts around 4.5, should bring insight into early stages of star formation
and galaxy evolution. By combing the
two overlapping samples, says Rhoads, we
can study the relation of galaxies in a way
that hasnt been seen at [this redshift].
Despite its awesome size and scope,
the NDWFS is not much more than a
first look. Its real strength will come
from follow-up observations such as
those conducted by Malhotra and Rhoads.
Leading the charge will be the two 8.1meter telescopes of the Gemini Observatory, the newest and largest instruments
in the NOAO fleet. The Chandra X-ray
Observatory, Hubble Space Telescope,
and the soon-to-be-launched Space Infrared Telescope Facility will also conduct follow-up work.
Other teams are carrying out similar
surveys that straddle the gap between extreme width and extreme depth. In April
the European Southern Observatory came
out with its own deep field, dubbed
Capodimonte for the Italian institution
carrying it out. Imaged with the 2.2meter telescope at ESOs La Silla Observatory in Chile, this 1-square field in
Corvus reached as faint as 25th magnitude. In the process it captured and
measured more than 35,000 objects in
several colors. As with the NOAO pro-

5. S C A L E : 1
This enlargement from the first image is
0.15 on a side. Here a large, low-redshift
galaxy cluster is seen within an ubiquitous cosmic foreground of young faint
blue galaxies.
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September 2001 Sky & Telescope

2001 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

R. BECKER, D. HELFAND, AND R. WHITE

6. S C A L E : 1
This field is centered on a radio galaxy
first detected by a survey carried out with
the Very Large Array (VLA) called Faint
Images of the Radio Sky at 20
Centimeters (FIRST). The radio
galaxy is the elliptical member
of an interacting pair of galaxies (arrowed). The FIRST radio
image (inset) is at the same
scale as the NDWFS view.

ject, interesting finds within

Capodimonte will get largetelescope follow-ups. In ESOs
case, Capodimonte is backed
by the four 8-meter reflectors collectively
known as the Very Large Telescope.
Deep wide-field surveys reflect an
emerging awareness of the value of mapping large areas of sky, says Arjun Dey,
one of the principal investigators for the
NDWFS. We need to understand galaxy
formation and evolution in the context
of their large-scale distribution. Since
this study requires large numbers of distant, faint galaxies over a large volume,
we need to survey large areas to faint
limits. A project like the NDWFS opens
peoples eyes to the riches of things we
have not yet discovered. More information is on the projects Web site, at www
.noao.edu/noao/noaodeep.
Sky & Telescope assistant editor David Tytell
is thinking of wallpapering his home with the
NOAO Deep Wide-Field Survey poster, assuming his modem can handle the full-resolution
750-megabyte file.

7. S C A L E : .5
The depth and breadth of the NOAO Deep
Wide-Field Survey is prompting many
other examinations of its fields at different wavelengths. Most notably, the northern Botes field has been mapped at long
radio wavelengths (90 centimeters) using
the VLA and at 21 cm with the Westerbork
Synthesis Radio Telescope. One example
of the collaborative science is this 2.6-by2.6 field centered on a spiral galaxy. This
galaxy is likely to be a radio source detected by the Westerbork survey, which is
being carried out by Huub Rttgering and
collaborators at the University of Leiden
in the Netherlands. Future observations
of the field are planned with the Space Infrared Telescope Facility, scheduled for
launch in 2002.

2001 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Sky & Telescope September 2001

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