The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series (Jan 2024)
High-quality Extragalactic Legacy-field Monitoring (HELM) with DECam: Project Overview and First Data Release
- Ming-Yang Zhuang,
- Qian Yang,
- Yue Shen,
- Monika Adamów,
- Douglas N. Friedel,
- R. A. Gruendl,
- Zachary Stone,
- Junyao Li,
- Xin Liu,
- Paul Martini,
- Timothy M. C. Abbott,
- Scott F. Anderson,
- Roberto J. Assef,
- Franz E. Bauer,
- Richard Bielby,
- W. N. Brandt,
- Colin J. Burke,
- Jorge Casares,
- Yu-Ching Chen,
- Gisella De Rosa,
- Alex Drlica-Wagner,
- Tom Dwelly,
- Alice Eltvedt,
- Gloria Fonseca Alvarez,
- Jianyang Fu,
- Cesar Fuentes,
- Melissa L. Graham,
- Catherine J. Grier,
- Nathan Golovich,
- Patrick B. Hall,
- Patrick Hartigan,
- Keith Horne,
- Anton M. Koekemoer,
- Mirko Krumpe,
- Jennifer I. Li,
- Chris Lidman,
- Umang Malik,
- Amelia Mangian,
- Andrea Merloni,
- Claudio Ricci,
- Mara Salvato,
- Rob Sharp,
- David E. Trilling,
- Brad E. Tucker,
- Di Wen,
- Zachary Wideman,
- Yongquan Xue,
- Zhefu Yu,
- Catherine Zucker
Affiliations
- Ming-Yang Zhuang
- ORCiD
- Department of Astronomy, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign , Urbana, IL 61801, USA ; [email protected]
- Qian Yang
- ORCiD
- Department of Astronomy, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign , Urbana, IL 61801, USA ; [email protected]; Center for Astrophysics ∣ Harvard & Smithsonian , 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
- Yue Shen
- ORCiD
- Department of Astronomy, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign , Urbana, IL 61801, USA ; [email protected]; National Center for Supercomputing Applications, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign , Urbana, IL 61801, USA
- Monika Adamów
- ORCiD
- Center for AstroPhysical Surveys, National Center for Supercomputing Applications, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign , Urbana, IL 61801, USA
- Douglas N. Friedel
- ORCiD
- National Center for Supercomputing Applications, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign , Urbana, IL 61801, USA
- R. A. Gruendl
- ORCiD
- National Center for Supercomputing Applications, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign , Urbana, IL 61801, USA
- Zachary Stone
- ORCiD
- Department of Astronomy, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign , Urbana, IL 61801, USA ; [email protected]; Center for AstroPhysical Surveys, National Center for Supercomputing Applications, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign , Urbana, IL 61801, USA
- Junyao Li
- ORCiD
- Department of Astronomy, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign , Urbana, IL 61801, USA ; [email protected]
- Xin Liu
- ORCiD
- Department of Astronomy, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign , Urbana, IL 61801, USA ; [email protected]; National Center for Supercomputing Applications, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign , Urbana, IL 61801, USA; Center for Artificial Intelligence Innovation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign , 1205 West Clark Street, Urbana, IL 61801, USA
- Paul Martini
- ORCiD
- Department of Astronomy, The Ohio State University , Columbus, OH 43210, USA; Center of Cosmology and Astro-Particle Physics, The Ohio State University , Columbus, OH 43210, USA
- Timothy M. C. Abbott
- ORCiD
- CTIO , NSF’s NOIRLab, Casilla 603, La Serena, Chile
- Scott F. Anderson
- ORCiD
- Astronomy Department, University of Washington , Box 351580, Seattle, WA 98195, USA
- Roberto J. Assef
- ORCiD
- Instituto de Estudios Astrofísicos , Facultad de Ingeniería y Ciencias, Universidad Diego Portales, Av. Ejército Libertador 441, Santiago, Chile
- Franz E. Bauer
- ORCiD
- Instituto de Astrofísica, Facultad de Física, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile , Campus San Joaquín, Av. Vicuña Mackenna 4860, Macul Santiago, 7820436, Chile; Centro de Astroingeniería, Facultad de Física, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile , Campus San Joaquín, Av. Vicuña Mackenna 4860, Macul Santiago, 7820436, Chile; Millennium Institute of Astrophysics , Nuncio Monseñor Sótero Sanz 100, Of 104, Providencia, Santiago, Chile
- Richard Bielby
- ORCiD
- Centre for Extragalactic Astronomy, Department of Physics, Durham University , South Road, Durham, DH1 3LE, UK
- W. N. Brandt
- ORCiD
- Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics, 525 Davey Lab, The Pennsylvania State University , University Park, PA 16802, USA; Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos, The Pennsylvania State University , University Park, PA 16802, USA; Department of Physics, 104 Davey Laboratory, The Pennsylvania State University , University Park, PA 16802, USA
- Colin J. Burke
- ORCiD
- Department of Astronomy, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign , Urbana, IL 61801, USA ; [email protected]
- Jorge Casares
- ORCiD
- Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias , E-38205 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain; Departamento de Astrofísica, Universidad de La Laguna , E-38206 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain
- Yu-Ching Chen
- ORCiD
- Department of Astronomy, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign , Urbana, IL 61801, USA ; [email protected]
- Gisella De Rosa
- ORCiD
- Space Telescope Science Institute , 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
- Alex Drlica-Wagner
- ORCiD
- Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory , P.O. Box 500, Batavia, IL 60510, USA; Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, University of Chicago , Chicago, IL 60637, USA; Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Chicago , Chicago, IL 60637, USA
- Tom Dwelly
- ORCiD
- Max-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics , Giessenbachstrasse 1, Garching, 85748, Germany
- Alice Eltvedt
- Centre for Extragalactic Astronomy, Department of Physics, Durham University , South Road, Durham, DH1 3LE, UK
- Gloria Fonseca Alvarez
- ORCiD
- NSF’s NOIRLab , 950 N. Cherry Avenue, Tucson, AZ 85719, USA
- Jianyang Fu
- ORCiD
- Department of Astronomy, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign , Urbana, IL 61801, USA ; [email protected]
- Cesar Fuentes
- ORCiD
- Millennium Institute of Astrophysics , Nuncio Monseñor Sótero Sanz 100, Of 104, Providencia, Santiago, Chile; Departamento de Astronomía, Universidad de Chile , Camino del Observatorio 1515, Las Condes, Santiago, Chile; Centro de Excelencia en Astrofísica y Tecnologías Afines (CATA) , Chile
- Melissa L. Graham
- ORCiD
- DIRAC Institute, Department of Astronomy, University of Washington , 3910 15th Avenue NE, Seattle, WA 98195, USA
- Catherine J. Grier
- ORCiD
- Department of Astronomy, University of Wisconsin-Madison , Madison, WI 53706, USA; Steward Observatory, The University of Arizona , 933 N. Cherry Avenue, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA
- Nathan Golovich
- ORCiD
- Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory , 7000 E. Avenue, Livermore, CA 94550, USA
- Patrick B. Hall
- ORCiD
- Department of Physics & Astronomy, York University , 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, ON M3J 1P3, Canada
- Patrick Hartigan
- ORCiD
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rice University , 6100 S. Main Street, TX 77005-1892, USA
- Keith Horne
- ORCiD
- University of St Andrews , SUPA School of Physics & Astronomy, North Haugh, St Andrews KY16 9SS, UK
- Anton M. Koekemoer
- ORCiD
- Space Telescope Science Institute , 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
- Mirko Krumpe
- Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) , An der Sternwarte 16, 14482 Potsdam, Germany
- Jennifer I. Li
- ORCiD
- Department of Astronomy, University of Michigan , Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA
- Chris Lidman
- ORCiD
- Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Australian National University , Canberra, ACT 2611, Australia; Centre for Gravitational Astrophysics, College of Science, The Australian National University , Canberra ACT 2601, Australia
- Umang Malik
- ORCiD
- Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Australian National University , Canberra, ACT 2611, Australia
- Amelia Mangian
- ORCiD
- Information Trust Institute, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign , Urbana, IL 61801, USA
- Andrea Merloni
- ORCiD
- Max-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics , Giessenbachstrasse 1, Garching, 85748, Germany
- Claudio Ricci
- ORCiD
- Núcleo de Astronomía de la Facultad de Ingeniería, Universidad Diego Portales , Av. Ejército Libertador 441, Santiago, Chile; Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Peking University , Beijing 100871, People's Republic of China
- Mara Salvato
- ORCiD
- Max-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics , Giessenbachstrasse 1, Garching, 85748, Germany
- Rob Sharp
- ORCiD
- Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Australian National University , Canberra, ACT 2611, Australia
- David E. Trilling
- ORCiD
- Department of Astronomy and Planetary Science, Northern Arizona University , Flagstaff, AZ 86011, USA
- Brad E. Tucker
- ORCiD
- Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Australian National University , Canberra, ACT 2611, Australia; National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, Australian National University , Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia; The Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for All-Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimension (ASTRO 3D) , Australia
- Di Wen
- ORCiD
- Department of Astronomy, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign , Urbana, IL 61801, USA ; [email protected]
- Zachary Wideman
- ORCiD
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, Texas A&M University , 4242 TAMU, College Station, TX 77843, USA
- Yongquan Xue
- ORCiD
- CAS Key Laboratory for Research in Galaxies and Cosmology, Department of Astronomy, University of Science and Technology of China , Hefei 230026, People's Republic of China
- Zhefu Yu
- ORCiD
- Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, Stanford University , 452 Lomita Mall, Stanford, CA 94305, USA
- Catherine Zucker
- ORCiD
- Center for Astrophysics ∣ Harvard & Smithsonian , 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4365/ad7d01
- Journal volume & issue
-
Vol. 274,
no. 2
p. 42
Abstract
High-quality Extragalactic Legacy-field Monitoring (HELM) is a long-term observing program that photometrically monitors several well-studied extragalactic legacy fields with the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) imager on the CTIO 4 m Blanco telescope. Since 2019 February, HELM has been monitoring regions within COSMOS, XMM-LSS, CDF-S, S-CVZ, ELAIS-S1, and SDSS Stripe 82 with few-day cadences in the ( u ) gri ( z ) bands, over a collective sky area of ∼38 deg ^2 . The main science goal of HELM is to provide high-quality optical light curves for a large sample of active galactic nuclei (AGNs), and to build decades-long time baselines when combining past and future optical light curves in these legacy fields. These optical images and light curves will facilitate the measurements of AGN reverberation mapping lags, as well as studies of AGN variability and its dependencies on accretion properties. In addition, the time-resolved and coadded DECam photometry will enable a broad range of science applications from galaxy evolution to time-domain science. We describe the design and implementation of the program and present the first data release that includes source catalogs and the first ∼3.5 yr of light curves during 2019A–2022A.
Keywords
