Project Overview of the Beijing–Arizona Sky Survey

Abstract

The Beijing-Arizona Sky Survey (BASS) is a wide-field two-band photometric\nsurvey of the Northern Galactic Cap using the 90Prime imager on the 2.3 m Bok\ntelescope at Kitt Peak. It is a four-year collaboration between the National\nAstronomical Observatory of China and Steward Observatory, the University of\nArizona, serving as one of the three imaging surveys to provide photometric\ninput catalogs for target selection of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument\n(DESI) project. BASS will take up to 240 dark/grey nights to cover an area of\nabout 5400 deg$^2$ in the $g$ and $r$ bands. The 5$\\sigma$ limiting AB\nmagnitudes for point sources in the two bands, corrected for the Galactic\nextinction, are 24.0 and 23.4 mag, respectively. BASS, together with other DESI\nimaging surveys, will provide unique science opportunities that cover a wide\nrange of topics in both Galactic and extragalactic astronomy.\n