The Southern Photometric Local Universe Survey (S-PLUS): improved SEDs, morphologies, and redshifts with 12 optical filters

Abstract

The Southern Photometric Local Universe Survey (S-PLUS) is imaging ∼9300 deg2 of the celestial sphere in 12 optical bands using a dedicated 0.8 m robotic telescope, the T80-South, at the Cerro Tololo Inter-american Observatory, Chile. The telescope is equipped with a 9.2k × 9.2k e2v detector with 10 $\rm {\mu m}$ pixels, resulting in a field of view of 2 deg2 with a plate scale of 0.55 arcsec pixel−1. The survey consists of four main subfields, which include two non-contiguous fields at high Galactic latitudes (|b| > 30°, 8000 deg2) and two areas of the Galactic Disc and Bulge (for an additional 1300 deg2). S-PLUS uses the Javalambre 12-band magnitude system, which includes the 5 ugriz broad-band filters and 7 narrow-band filters centred on prominent stellar spectral features: the Balmer jump/[OII], Ca H + K, H δ, G band, Mg b triplet, H α, and the Ca triplet. S-PLUS delivers accurate photometric redshifts (δz/(1 + z) = 0.02 or better) for galaxies with r < 19.7 AB mag and z < 0.4, thus producing a 3D map of the local Universe over a volume of more than $1\, (\mathrm{Gpc}/h)^3$. The final S-PLUS catalogue will also enable the study of star formation and stellar populations in and around the Milky Way and nearby galaxies, as well as searches for quasars, variable sources, and low-metallicity stars. In this paper we introduce the main characteristics of the survey, illustrated with science verification data highlighting the unique capabilities of S-PLUS. We also present the first public data release of ∼336 deg2 of the Stripe 82 area, in 12 bands, to a limiting magnitude of r = 21, available at datalab.noao.edu/splus.

One Hundred SMUDGes in S-PLUS: Ultra-diffuse Galaxies Flourish in the Field

“…The DR1 data are already reduced and are publicly available in the NSFs National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Labora-tory archive 1 . Details about the survey strategy and data reduction process are described by Mendes de Oliveira et al (2019) while the photometric calibration is described in Sampedro et al (in prep. ).…”

“…The S-PLUS uses the same photometric system of the J-PLUS survey (Marín-Franch et al 2012), which consists of twelve optical bands, including 5 broad-bands similar to those used by the Sloan digital sky survey (SDSS) ugriz system, and a set of seven narrow-band (∆λ = 100 − 200Å) filters placed at various rest-frame optical features, including [OII] (λ eff = 3771Å), Ca H+K (λ eff = 3941Å), Hδ (λ eff = 4094Å), G-band (λ eff = 4292Å), Mg b triplet (λ eff = 5133Å), Hα (λ eff = 6614 A) and the Ca triplet (λ eff = 8611Å). Considering a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) threshold of 3, the survey is complete in the broad bands to magnitudes of u = 21.07, g = 21.79, r = 21.6, i = 21.22 and z = 20.64, whereas it is complete to magnitudes of ∼ 20.4 in all narrow bands (Mendes de Oliveira et al 2019).…”

The miniJPAS survey: A preview of the Universe in 56 colors

“…J-PLUS has already observed thousands of square degrees and its data are being used for a broad variety of science studies, for instance, the search for metal-poor stars (Whitten et al 2019b) or the 2D study of nearby galaxies (San Roman et al 2019) and star forming regions (Logroño-García et al 2019). Likewise, S-PLUS uses the T80-South (a replica of the JAST/T80) located at CTIO and it has also observed thousands of square degrees with a somewhat different survey strategy than J-PLUS that is optimized to match its science goals (see Mendes de Oliveira et al 2019).…”

S-PLUS: LEnticular Galaxies in Stripe 82 (LEGS82)

“…the region where the bulge dominates, again making it hard to separate elliptical galaxies, from lenticular galaxies with large bulge-over-total light ratio. Multi-wavelength surveys (as S-PLUS (Mendes de Oliveira et al 2019)) open a new window on galaxy classification, combining the possibility of studying the variation of morphological parameters with wavelengths and recovering the galaxy stellar population. We present preliminary results of this approach, using the S-PLUS first data release 1 , and we describe new methods to identify lenticular galaxies.…”