The Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey (CANDELS) is designed to document the first third of galactic evolution, over the approximate redshift (z) range 8-1.5. It will image >250,000 distant galaxies using three separate cameras on the Hubble Space Telescope, from the mid-ultraviolet to the near-infrared, and will find and measure Type Ia supernovae at z > 1.5 to test their accuracy as standardizable candles for cosmology. Five premier multi-wavelength sky regions are selected, each with extensive ancillary data. The use of five widely separated fields mitigates cosmic variance and yields statistically robust and complete samples of galaxies down to a stellar mass of 10 9 M to z ≈ 2, reaching the knee of the ultraviolet luminosity function of galaxies to z ≈ 8. The survey covers approximately 800 arcmin 2 and is divided into two parts. The CANDELS/Deep survey (5σ point-source limit H = 27.7 mag) covers ∼125 arcmin 2 within Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey (GOODS)-N and GOODS-S. The CANDELS/Wide survey includes GOODS and three additional fields (Extended Groth Strip, COSMOS, and Ultra-deep Survey) and covers the full area to a 5σ pointsource limit of H 27.0 mag. Together with the Hubble Ultra Deep Fields, the strategy creates a three-tiered "wedding-cake" approach that has proven efficient for extragalactic surveys. Data from the survey are nonproprietary and are useful for a wide variety of science investigations. In this paper, we describe the basic motivations for the survey, the CANDELS team science goals and the resulting observational requirements, the field selection and geometry, and the observing design. The Hubble data processing and products are described in a companion paper.

This paper describes the Hubble Space Telescope imaging data products and data reduction procedures for the Cosmic Assembly Near-IR Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey (CANDELS). This survey is designed to document the evolution of galaxies and black holes at z ∼ 1.5 − 8, and to study Type Ia SNe beyond z > 1.5. Five premier multi-wavelength sky regions are selected, each with extensive multiwavelength observations. The primary CANDELS data consist of imaging obtained in the Wide Field Camera 3 / infrared channel (WFC3/IR) and UVIS channel, along with the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). The CANDELS/Deep survey covers ∼ 125 square arcminutes within GOODS-N and GOODS-S, while the remainder consists of the CANDELS/Wide survey, achieving a total of ∼ 800 square arcminutes across GOODS and three additional fields (EGS, COSMOS, and UDS). We summarize the observational aspects of the survey as motivated by the scientific goals and present a detailed description of the data reduction procedures and products from the survey. Our data reduction methods utilize the most up to date calibration files and image combination procedures. We have paid special attention to correcting a range of instrumental effects, including CTE degradation for ACS, removal of electronic bias-striping present in ACS data after SM4, and persistence effects and other artifacts in WFC3/IR. For each field, we release mosaics for individual epochs and eventual mosaics containing data from all epochs combined, to facilitate photometric variability studies and the deepest possible photometry. A more detailed overview of the science goals and observational design of the survey are presented in a companion paper.

Using HST /WFC3 imaging taken as part of the Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey (CANDELS), we examine the role that major galaxy mergers play in triggering active galactic nuclei (AGN) activity at z ∼ 2. Our sample consists of 72 moderate-luminosity (L X ∼ 10 42−44 erg s −1 ) AGN at 1.5 < z < 2.5 that are selected using the 4 Msec Chandra observations in the Chandra Deep Field South, the deepest X-ray observations to date. Employing visual classifications, we have analyzed the rest-frame optical morphologies of the AGN host galaxies and compared them to a massmatched control sample of 216 non-active galaxies at the same redshift. We find that most of the AGN reside in disk galaxies (51.4 +5.8 −5.9 %), while a smaller percentage are found in spheroids (27.8 +5.8 −4.6 %). Roughly 16.7 +5.3 −3.5 % of the AGN hosts have highly disturbed morphologies and appear to be involved in a major merger or interaction, while most of the hosts (55.6 +5.6 −5.9 %) appear relatively relaxed and undisturbed. These fractions are statistically consistent with the fraction of control galaxies that show similar morphological disturbances. These results suggest that the hosts of moderate-luminosity AGN are no more likely to be involved in an ongoing merger or interaction relative to non-active galaxies of similar mass at z ∼ 2. The high disk fraction observed among the AGN hosts also appears to be at odds with predictions that merger-driven accretion should be the dominant AGN fueling mode at z ∼ 2, even at moderate X-ray luminosities. Although we cannot rule out that minor mergers are responsible for triggering these systems, the presence of a large population of relatively undisturbed disk-like hosts suggests that secular processes play a greater role in fueling AGN activity at z ∼ 2 than previously thought.

Although giant clumps of stars are thought to be crucial to galaxy formation and evolution, the most basic demographics of clumps are still uncertain, mainly because the definition of clumps has not been thoroughly discussed. In this paper, we carry out a study of the basic demographics of clumps in star-forming galaxies at 0.5 < z < 3, using our proposed physical definition that UV-bright clumps are discrete star-forming regions that individually contribute more than 8% of the rest-frame UV light of their galaxies. Clumps defined this way are significantly brighter than the HII regions of nearby large spiral galaxies, either individually or blended, when physical spatial resolution and cosmological dimming are considered. Under this definition, we measure the fraction of star-forming galaxies that have at least one off-center clump (f clumpy ) and the contributions of clumps to the rest-frame UV light and star formation rate (SFR) of star-forming galaxies in the CANDELS/GOODS-S and UDS fields, where our mass-complete sample consists of 3239 galaxies with axial ratio q > 0.5. The redshift evolution of f clumpy changes with the stellar mass (M * ) of the galaxies. Low-mass (log(M * /M ⊙ ) < 9.8) galaxies keep an almost constant f clumpy of ∼60% from z ∼ 3 to z ∼ 0.5. Intermediate-mass and massive galaxies drop their f clumpy from 55% at z ∼ 3 to 40% and 15%, respectively, at z ∼ 0.5. We find that (1) the trend of disk stabilization predicted by violent disk instability matches the f clumpy trend of massive galaxies; (2) minor mergers are a viable explanation of the f clumpy trend of intermediate-mass galaxies at z < 1.5, given a realistic observability timescale; and (3) major mergers are unlikely responsible for the f clumpy trend in all masses at z < 1.5. The clump contribution to the rest-frame UV light of star-forming galaxies shows a broad peak around galaxies with log(M * /M ⊙ ) ∼ 10.5 at all redshifts. The clump contribution in the intermediate-mass and massive galaxies is possibly linked to the molecular gas fraction of the galaxies. The clump contribution to the SFR of star-forming galaxies, generally around 4-10%, also shows dependence on the galaxy M * , but for a given galaxy M * , its dependence on the redshift is mild.