The DECam Local Volume Exploration Survey: Overview and First Data Release
Bechtol, K.; Zenteno, A.; Abbott, T. M. C.; Allam, S.; Gruendl, R. A.; James, D. J.; Kuropatkin, N.; Li, T. S.; Rykoff, E. S.; Soares-Santos, M.; Walker, A. R.; Carlin, J. L.; Wu, J. F.; Crnojević, D.; Martínez-Vázquez, C. E.; Palmese, A.; Bell, E. F.; Cioni, M. -R. L.; van der Marel, R. P.; Erkal, D.; Drlica-Wagner, A.; Wechsler, R. H.; Yanny, B.; Vivas, A. K.; Nidever, D. L.; Nikutta, R.; Stringfellow, G. S.; Olsen, K. A. G.; Ferguson, P. S.; Adamów, M.; Bilaji, P.; Bom, C. R.; Carballo-Bello, J. A.; Cerny, W.; Choi, Y.; Fitzpatrick, M.; Hernandez-Lang, D.; Hughes, A. K.; Jacques, A.; Martínez-Delgado, D.; Massana, P.; Mau, S.; McNanna, M.; Miller, A. E.; Morgan, R.; Mutlu-Pakdil, B.; Neilsen, E. H.; Noël, N. E. D.; Pace, A. B.; Riley, A. H.; Sakowska, J. D.; Sand, D. J.; Santana-Silva, L.; Simon, J. D.; Tavangar, K.; Tollerud, E. J.; Tucker, D. L.; Zaborowski, E.; Astro Data Lab; de Boer, T. J. L.; Esteves, J. H.; Bell, C. P. M.; Diaz-Ocampo, A.; Johnson, L. C.; Mao, Y. -Y.; Nadler, E. O.; Peter, A. H. G.; Sánchez, J.; Shipp, N.; Smercina, A.; Huang, L.; Scott, A.
United States, Chile, Germany, United Kingdom, Brazil, Spain
Abstract
The DECam Local Volume Exploration survey (DELVE) is a 126-night survey program on the 4 m Blanco Telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. DELVE seeks to understand the characteristics of faint satellite galaxies and other resolved stellar substructures over a range of environments in the Local Volume. DELVE will combine new DECam observations with archival DECam data to cover ~15,000 deg2 of high Galactic latitude (∣b∣ > 10°) southern sky to a 5σ depth of g, r, i, z ~ 23.5 mag. In addition, DELVE will cover a region of ~2200 deg2 around the Magellanic Clouds to a depth of g, r, i ~ 24.5 mag and an area of ~135 deg2 around four Magellanic analogs to a depth of g, i ~ 25.5 mag. Here, we present an overview of the DELVE program and progress to date. We also summarize the first DELVE public data release (DELVE DR1), which provides point-source and automatic aperture photometry for ~520 million astronomical sources covering ~5000 deg2 of the southern sky to a 5σ point-source depth of g = 24.3 mag, r = 23.9 mag, i = 23.3 mag, and z = 22.8 mag. DELVE DR1 is publicly available via the NOIRLab Astro Data Lab science platform.