MINERVA: A NIRCam Medium Band and MIRI Imaging Survey to Unlock the Hidden Gems of the Distant Universe
astro-ph.GA
/ Authors
Adam Muzzin, Katherine A. Suess, Danilo Marchesini, Luke Robbins, Chris J. Willott, Stacey Alberts, Jacqueline Antwi-Danso, Yoshihisa Asada, Gabriel Brammer, Sam E. Cutler
and 74 more authors
Kartheik G. Iyer, Ivo Labbe, Nicholas S. Martis, Tim B. Miller, Ikki Mitsuhashi, Alexandra Pope, Anna Sajina, Ghassan T. E. Sarrouh, Monu Sharma, Mauro Stefanon, Katherine E. Whitaker, Roberto Abraham, Hakim Atek, Marusa Bradac, Samantha Berek, Rachel Bezanson, Westley Brown, Adam J. Burgasser, Nathalie Chicoine, Aidan P. Cloonan, Olivia R. Cooper, Pratika Dayal,
/ Abstract
We present an overview of the MINERVA survey, a 259.8 hour (prime) and 127 hour (parallel) Cycle 4 treasury program on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). MINERVA is obtaining 8 filter NIRCam medium band imaging (F140M, F162M, F182M, F210M, F250M, F300M, F360M, F460M) and 2 filter MIRI imaging (F1280W, F1500W) in four of the five CANDELS Extragalactic fields: UDS, COSMOS, AEGIS and GOODS-N. These fields were previously observed in Cycle 1 with 7 - 9 NIRCam filters by the PRIMER, CEERS and JADES programs. MINERVA reaches a 5$σ$ depth of 28.1 mag in F300M and covers $\sim$ 542 arcmin$^2$, increasing the area of existing JWST medium-band coverage in at least 8 bands by $\sim$ 7$\times$. The MIRI imaging reaches a 5$σ$ depth of 23.9 mag in F1280W and covers $\sim$ 275 arcmin$^2$ in at least 2 MIRI filters. When combined with existing imaging, these data will provide a photometric catalog with 20-26 JWST filters (depending on field) and 26-35 filters total, including HST. This paper presents a detailed breakdown of the filter coverage, exposure times, and field layout relative to previous observations, as well as an overview of the primary science goals of the project. These include uncovering the physics of enigmatic sources hiding in current broadband catalogs, improving systematics on stellar mass functions and number densities by factors of $\gtrsim$ 3, and resolved mapping of stellar mass and star formation at 1 $< z <$ 6. When complete, MINERVA will become an integral part of the treasury deep field imaging datasets, significantly improving population studies with well-understood completeness, robust photometric redshifts, stellar masses, and sizes, and facilitating spectroscopic follow up for decades to come.