Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) is a wide-field imaging camera on the prime focus of the 8.2m Subaru telescope on the summit of Maunakea in Hawaii. A team of scientists from Japan, Taiwan and Princeton University is using HSC to carry out a 300-night multi-band imaging survey of the high-latitude sky. The survey includes three layers: the Wide layer will cover 1400 deg 2 in five broad bands (grizy), with a 5 σ point-source depth of r ≈ 26. The Deep layer covers a total of 26 deg 2 in four fields, going roughly a magnitude fainter, while the UltraDeep layer goes almost a magnitude fainter still in two pointings of HSC (a total of 3.5 deg 2). Here we describe the instrument, the science goals of the survey, and the survey strategy and data processing. This paper serves as an introduction to a special issue of the Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japan, which includes a large number of technical and scientific papers describing results from the early phases of this survey.

The Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program (HSC-SSP) is a three-layered imaging survey aimed at addressing some of the most important outstanding questions in astronomy today, including the nature of dark matter and dark energy. The survey has been awarded 300 nights of observing time at the Subaru Telescope, and it started in 2014 March. This paper presents the first public data release of HSC-SSP. This release includes data taken in the first 1.7 yr of observations (61.5 nights), and each of the Wide, Deep, and UltraDeep layers covers about 108, 26, and 4 square degrees down to depths of i ∼ 26.4, ∼26.5, and ∼27.0 mag, respectively (5 σ for point sources). All the layers are observed in five broad bands (grizy), and the Deep and UltraDeep layers are observed in narrow bands as well. We achieve an impressive image quality of 0${^{\prime\prime}_{.}}$6 in the i band in the Wide layer. We show that we achieve 1%–2% point spread function (PSF) photometry (root mean square) both internally and externally (against Pan-STARRS1), and ∼10 mas and 40 mas internal and external astrometric accuracy, respectively. Both the calibrated images and catalogs are made available to the community through dedicated user interfaces and database servers. In addition to the pipeline products, we also provide value-added products such as photometric redshifts and a collection of public spectroscopic redshifts. Detailed descriptions of all the data can be found online. The data release website is https://hsc-release.mtk.nao.ac.jp.

We have mapped the protobinary source IRAS 16293À2422 in CO 2Y1, 13 CO 2Y1, and CO 3Y2 with the Submillimeter Array (SMA). The maps with resolution of 1.5 00 Y5 00 reveal a single small-scale ($3000 AU ) bipolar molecular outflow along the east-west direction. We found that the blueshifted emission of this small-scale outflow mainly extends to the east and the redshifted emission to the west from the position of IRAS 16293A. A comparison with the morphology of the large-scale outflows previously observed by single-dish telescopes at millimeter wavelengths suggests that the small-scale outflow may be the inner part of the large-scale ($15,000 AU ) east-west outflow. On the other hand, there is no clear counterpart of the large-scale northeast-southwest outflow in our SMA maps. Comparing analytical models to the data suggests that the morphology and kinematics of the small-scale outflow can be explained by a wide-angle wind with an inclination angle of $30 Y 40 with respect to the plane of the sky. The high-resolution CO maps show that there are two compact, bright spots in the blueshifted velocity range.