THE SPITZER-HETDEX EXPLORATORY LARGE-AREA SURVEY
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ABSTRACTWe present post-cryogenic Spitzer imaging at 3.6 and 4.5 m with the Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) of the Spitzer/HETDEX Exploratory Large-Area (SHELA) survey. SHELA covers 24 deg2 of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Stripe 82 region, and falls within the footprints of the HobbyEberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX) and the Dark Energy Survey. The HETDEX blind R 800 spectroscopy will produce 200,000 redshifts from the Ly emission for galaxies in the range 1.9<z<3.5, and an additional 200,000 redshifts from the [O ii] emission for galaxies at z<0.5. When combined with deep ugriz images from the Dark Energy Camera, K-band images from NEWFIRM, and other ancillary data, the IRAC photometry from Spitzer will enable a broad range of scientific studies of the relationship between structure formation, galaxy stellar mass, halo mass, the presence of active galactic nuclei, and environment over a co-moving volume of 0.5Gpc3 at 1.9<z<3.5. Here, we discuss the properties of the SHELA IRAC data set, including the data acquisition, reduction, validation, and source catalogs. Our tests show that the images and catalogs are 80% (50%) complete to limiting magnitudes of 22.0 (22.6) AB mag in the detection image, which is constructed from the weighted sum of the IRAC 3.6 and 4.5 m images. The catalogs reach limiting sensitivities of 1.1Jy at both 3.6 and 4.5 m (1, for R = 2 circular apertures). As a demonstration of the science, we present IRAC number counts, examples of highly temporally variable sources, and galaxy surface density profiles of rich galaxy clusters. In the spirit of the Spitzer Exploratory programs, we provide all of the images and catalogs as part of the publication.
