AGES: The AGN and galaxy evolution survey

Abstract

The AGN and Galaxy Evolution Survey (AGES) is a redshift survey covering, in its standard fields, 7.7deg 2 of the Boötes field of the NOAO Deep Wide-Field Survey. The final sample consists of 23,745 redshifts. There are well-defined galaxy samples in 10 bands (the B W , R, I, J, K, IRAC 3.6, 4.5, 5.8, and 8.0 μm, and MIPS 24 μm bands) to a limiting magnitude of I < 20mag for spectroscopy. For these galaxies, we obtained 18,163 redshifts from a sample of 35,200 galaxies, where random sparse sampling was used to define statistically complete sub-samples in all 10 photometric bands. The median galaxy redshift is 0.31, and 90% of the redshifts are in the range 0.085 < z < 0.66. Active galactic nuclei (AGNs) were selected as radio, X-ray, IRAC mid-IR, and MIPS 24 μmsources to fainter limiting magnitudes (I < 22.5mag for point sources). Redshifts were obtained for 4764 quasars and galaxies with AGN signatures, with 2926, 1718, 605, 119, and 13 above redshifts of 0.5, 1, 2, 3, and 4, respectively. We detail all the AGES selection procedures and present the complete spectroscopic redshift catalogs and spectral energy distribution decompositions. Photometric redshift estimates are provided for all sources in the AGES samples. © 2012. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved..