• Ashby, M. L. N.
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• Willner, S. P.
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• Fazio, G. G.
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• Dunlop, J. S.
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• Egami, E.
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• Faber, S. M.
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• Ferguson, H. C.
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• Grogin, N. A.
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• Hora, J. L.
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• Huang, J. -S.
;
• Koekemoer, A. M.
;
• Labbé, I.
;
• Wang, Z.

Abstract

The Spitzer-Cosmic Assembly Deep Near-infrared Extragalactic Legacy Survey (S-CANDELS; PI G.Fazio) is a Cycle 8 Exploration Program designed to detect galaxies at very high redshifts (z\gt 5). To mitigate the effects of cosmic variance and also to take advantage of deep coextensive coverage in multiple bands by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Multi-cycle Treasury Program CANDELS, S-CANDELS was carried out within five widely separated extragalactic fields: the UKIDSS Ultra-deep Survey, the Extended Chandra Deep Field South, COSMOS, the HST Deep Field North, and the Extended Groth Strip. S-CANDELS builds upon the existing coverage of these fields from the Spitzer Extended Deep Survey (SEDS), a Cycle 6 Exploration Program, by increasing the integration time from SEDS’ 12 hr to a total of 50 hr but within a smaller area, 0.16 deg². The additional depth significantly increases the survey completeness at faint magnitudes. This paper describes the S-CANDELS survey design, processing, and publicly available data products. We present Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) dual-band 3.6+4.5 μ {{m}} catalogs reaching to a depth of 26.5 AB mag. Deep IRAC counts for the roughly 135,000 galaxies detected by S-CANDELS are consistent with models based on known galaxy populations. The increase in depth beyond earlier Spitzer/IRAC surveys does not reveal a significant additional contribution from discrete sources to the diffuse Cosmic Infrared Background (CIB). Thus it remains true that only roughly half of the estimated CIB flux from COBE/DIRBE is resolved.