OPTICAL IMAGES AND SOURCE CATALOG OF AKARI NORTH ECLIPTIC POLE WIDE SURVEY FIELD

We present the source catalog and the properties of the B-, R-, and I-band images obtained to support the AKARI North Ecliptic Pole Wide (NEP-Wide) survey. The NEP-Wide is an AKARI infrared imaging survey of the north ecliptic pole covering a 5.8 deg2 area over 2.5–6 μm wavelengths. The optical imaging data were obtained at the Maidanak Observatory in Uzbekistan using the Seoul National University 4k × 4k Camera on the 1.5 m telescope. These images cover 4.9 deg2 where no deep optical imaging data are available. Our B-, R-, and I-band data reach the depths of ∼23.4, ∼23.1, and ∼22.3 mag (AB) at 5σ, respectively. The source catalog contains 96,460 objects in the R band, and the astrometric accuracy is about 0.″15 at 1σ in each R.A. and decl. direction. These photometric data will be useful for many studies including identification of optical counterparts of the infrared sources detected by AKARI, analysis of their spectral energy distributions from optical through infrared, and the selection of interesting objects to understand the obscured galaxy evolution.