First Results from the SPICES Survey

We present first results from SPICES, the Spectroscopic, Photometric, Infrared-Chosen Extragalactic Survey. SPICES is comprised of four \(\approx 30\) arcmin² high Galactic latitude fields with deep BRIzJK _s imaging reaching depths of \(\approx 25\) mag (AB) in the optical and \(\approx 23\) mag (AB) in the near-infrared. To date we have 626 spectroscopic redshifts for infrared-selected SPICES sources with K _s < 20 (Vega). The project is poised to address galaxy formation and evolution to redshift \(z \approx 2\). We discuss initial results from the survey, including the surface density of extremely red objects and the fraction of infrared sources at z > 1. One of the SPICES fields has been the target of a deep 190 ksec Chandra exposure; we discuss initial results from analysis of that data set. Finally, we briefly discuss a successful campaign to identify high-redshift sources in the SPICES fields.

Authors and Affiliations

1. Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, MS 169-327, Pasadena, CA 91109, USA

   Daniel Stern & Peter Eisenhardt

2. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA

   Andrew Connolly

3. Department of Astronomy, The University of Florida, P.O. Box 112055, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA

   Richard Elston & Katherine Wu

4. Physics Department, University of California at Davis, Davis, CA 95616, USA and Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA 94550, USA

   Brad Holden & S. Adam Stanford

5. ESO

   Piero Rosati

6. Department of Astronomy, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA

   Hyron Spinrad

7. Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste, via G.B. Tiepolo 11, I-34131, Trieste, Italy

   Paolo Tozzi

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