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XMM/SWIRE field
The idea of going after the entire 8x8 degree XMM field which has now
attracted SIRTF time should be one of the key components. Along with
a complementary area in the North this leads to about 550 nights in
quite a reasonable survey that should hit many of the key goals. I
think the area should be boosted beyond the minimum to get this up to
about 750 or so, but the basic should be hit hard as soon as Megacam
is fully functional.
What do you think?
Having read the ideas from Pierre and Vigroux in the archive,
at this stage there are probably some changes that one would want:
o Go to the Sloan filters (as the survey standard set for all fields)
o Probably the exposure times should be boosted a bit to give
somewhat better depth.
o The z filter should be included. If the reddest filter is I
then we will be terribly limited for z>1 objects.
o The U filter has the usual problem of being exceptionally expensive.
I'd suggest a uniform coverage, plus going deeper in
the fields where XMM is going deep. U has two very distinct
regimes of use. It is good for galactic stars, low redshift
galaxies and QSOs (all relatively bright) and for very high redshift
"dropout" objects (very faint in U), so the split in area
has some naturalness to it.
o For 5 filters (ugriz, primed) at 4 hours each the 8x8 patch will require
1280 hours, for the "standard depth" survey.
o The XMM deep field is also part of a GTO survey, so
it would be worth putting that field down for supernovae monitoring.
It would make most sense to build that up in i to pick
up say one 4hr observation per week for 15 epochs. That
would give a total I depth of about 60 hrs. The other filters
should be increased in depth to about 20 hrs in this single
field. That requires 20*4+60= 140 hours.
The total time for this field would then be 1420 hrs, or about 180 nights.
Something similar at the HDF and/or Lockman Hole (they are about 15
degrees apart so we could do a 15x5 rectangle including both) would be
quite a nice basic survey. It might also be reasonable to go a bit
further south from the XMM to pick up more of the low extinction
field. The one issue to be addressed is how to fold Kuiper Belt
objects into this. Excluding that the XMM plus 15x5 would be 2920
hours, or about 365 nights (8 hrs useful, calibrations etc done at
other times). Normal CFHT sky of say 2/3 clear would require an
allocation of about 550 nights.