The Spitzer Extragalactic Representative Volume Survey - measuring photometric redshifts for ∼4 million galaxies - challenges and ways forward

2019 
We highlight the challenges as well as lessons learnt in the derivation of the photometric redshifts for ∼4 million galaxies at 0 < z ≲ 6 contained in the Spitzer Extragalactic Representative Volume Survey (SERVS) and summarise the photometric redshift results recently published in Pforr et al. (2019). The inhomogeneous nature of the ancillary photometry for SERVS presents a similar situation to the one future, large, extragalactic surveys with e.g. LSST and JWST will face. We employ template SED-fitting to determine photometric redshifts. Our comparison of photometric redshifts to ∼75.000 public, spectroscopic redshifts results in an average σNMAD of ∼0.038 and outlier fraction of 3.7% for sources with the best photometric coverage. We find that photometric redshifts are determined most robustly when filter bands are numerous and cover a wide wavelength range. We highlight some possible improvements for the photometric redshifts in SERVS in the future.
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