The red-sequence cluster survey-2 (RCS-2): Survey details and photometric catalog construction

The second Red-sequence Cluster Survey (RCS-2) is a 1000deg2, multi-color imaging survey using the square-degree imager, MegaCam, on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope. It is designed to detect clusters of galaxies over the redshift range 0.1 ≲ z ≲ 1. The primary aim is to build a statistically complete, large (104) sample of clusters, covering a sufficiently long redshift baseline to be able to place constraints on cosmological parameters via the evolution of the cluster mass function. Other main science goals include building a large sample of high surface brightness, strongly gravitationally lensed arcs associated with these clusters, and an unprecedented sample of several tens of thousands of galaxy clusters and groups, spanning a large range of halo mass, with which to study the properties and evolution of their member galaxies. This paper describes the design of the survey and the methodology for acquiring, reducing, and calibrating the data for the production of high-precision photometric catalogs. We describe the method for calibrating our griz imaging data using the colors of the stellar locus and overlapping Two Micron All Sky Survey photometry. This yields an absolute accuracy of <0.03mag on any color and 0.05mag in the r-band magnitude, verified with respect to the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). Our astrometric calibration is accurate to ≪03 from comparison with SDSS positions. RCS-2 reaches average 5σ point-source limiting magnitudes of griz = [24.4, 24.3, 23.7, 22.8], approximately 1-2mag deeper than the SDSS. Due to the queue-scheduled nature of the observations, the data are highly uniform and taken in excellent seeing, mostly FWHM ≲ 07 in the r band. In addition to the main science goals just described, these data form the basis for a number of other planned and ongoing projects (including the WiggleZ survey), making RCS-2 an important next-generation imaging survey. © 2011. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.