TY - JOUR
T1 - SKYSURF-3
T2 - Testing Crowded Object Catalogs in the Hubble eXtreme Deep Field Mosaics to Study Sample Incompleteness from an Extragalactic Background Light Perspective
AU - Kramer, Darby M.
AU - Carleton, Timothy
AU - Cohen, Seth H.
AU - Jansen, Rolf
AU - Windhorst, Rogier A.
AU - Grogin, Norman
AU - Koekemoer, Anton
AU - MacKenty, John W.
AU - Pirzkal, Nor
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank the anonymous referee for insightful comments that helped improve this Letter. We also thank the entire SKYSURF team for their interest, comments, and discussion about this work; especially, we thank Rosalia O’Brien for her support and helpful feedback. Finally, we thank Alex Van Engelen and his research group at ASU for their insight and perspective. This project is based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and obtained from the Hubble Legacy Archive, which is a collaboration between the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI/NASA), the Space Telescope European Coordinating Facility (ST-ECF/ESA), and the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre (CADC/NRC/CSA). We acknowledge support for HST program AR-15810 provided by NASA through a grant from STScI, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Incorporated, under NASA contract NAS5-26555. RAW, SHC, and RAJ acknowledge support from NASA JWST Interdisciplinary Scientist grants NAG5-12460, NNX14AN10G, and 80NSSC18K0200 from GSFC.
Funding Information:
We thank the anonymous referee for insightful comments that helped improve this Letter. We also thank the entire SKYSURF team for their interest, comments, and discussion about this work; especially, we thank Rosalia O’Brien for her support and helpful feedback. Finally, we thank Alex Van Engelen and his research group at ASU for their insight and perspective. This project is based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and obtained from the Hubble Legacy Archive, which is a collaboration between the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI/NASA), the Space Telescope European Coordinating Facility (ST-ECF/ESA), and the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre (CADC/NRC/CSA). We acknowledge support for HST program AR-15810 provided by NASA through a grant from STScI, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Incorporated, under NASA contract NAS5-26555. RAW, SHC, and RAJ acknowledge support from NASA JWST Interdisciplinary Scientist grants NAG5-12460, NNX14AN10G, and 80NSSC18K0200 from GSFC.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society.
PY - 2022/11/1
Y1 - 2022/11/1
N2 - Extragalactic background light (EBL) studies have revealed a significant discrepancy between direct measurements—via instruments measuring “bare” sky from which Zodiacal and Galactic light models are subtracted—and measurements of the integrated galaxy light (IGL). This discrepancy could lie in either method, whether it be an incomplete Zodiacal model or missed faint galaxies in the IGL calculations. It has been proposed that the discrepancy is due to deep galaxy surveys, such as those with the Hubble Space Telescope, missing up to half of the faint galaxies with 24 ≲ m AB ≲ 29 mag. We address this possibility by simulating higher number densities of galaxies, and so assess incompleteness due to object overlap, with three replications of the Hubble UltraDeep Field (HUDF). SourceExtractor is used to compare the recovered counts and photometry to the original HUDF, allowing us to assess how many galaxies may have been missed due to confusion, i.e., due to blending with neighboring faint galaxies. This exercise reveals that, while up to 50% of faint galaxies with 28 ≲ m AB ≲ 29 mag were missed or blended with neighboring objects in certain filters, not enough were missed to account for the EBL discrepancy alone in any of the replications.
AB - Extragalactic background light (EBL) studies have revealed a significant discrepancy between direct measurements—via instruments measuring “bare” sky from which Zodiacal and Galactic light models are subtracted—and measurements of the integrated galaxy light (IGL). This discrepancy could lie in either method, whether it be an incomplete Zodiacal model or missed faint galaxies in the IGL calculations. It has been proposed that the discrepancy is due to deep galaxy surveys, such as those with the Hubble Space Telescope, missing up to half of the faint galaxies with 24 ≲ m AB ≲ 29 mag. We address this possibility by simulating higher number densities of galaxies, and so assess incompleteness due to object overlap, with three replications of the Hubble UltraDeep Field (HUDF). SourceExtractor is used to compare the recovered counts and photometry to the original HUDF, allowing us to assess how many galaxies may have been missed due to confusion, i.e., due to blending with neighboring faint galaxies. This exercise reveals that, while up to 50% of faint galaxies with 28 ≲ m AB ≲ 29 mag were missed or blended with neighboring objects in certain filters, not enough were missed to account for the EBL discrepancy alone in any of the replications.
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UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85142509157&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3847/2041-8213/ac9cca
DO - 10.3847/2041-8213/ac9cca
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85142509157
SN - 2041-8205
VL - 940
JO - Astrophysical Journal Letters
JF - Astrophysical Journal Letters
IS - 1
M1 - L15
ER -