SpIES: the Spitzer IRAC Equatorial Survey

SpIES was designed to probe sufficient volume to perform measurements of quasar clustering and the luminosity function at z>=3 to test various models for "feedback" from active galactic nuclei (AGNs). Additionally, the wide range of available multi-wavelength, multi-epoch ancillary data enables SpIES to identify both high-redshift (z>=5) quasars as well as obscured quasars missed by optical surveys.

SpIES achieves 5{sigma} depths of 6.13uJy (21.93 AB magnitude) and 5.75uJy (22.0 AB magnitude) at 3.6 and 4.5um, respectively --depths significantly fainter than the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). We show that the SpIES survey recovers a much larger fraction of spectroscopically confirmed quasars (~98%) in Stripe 82 than are recovered by WISE (~55%). This depth is especially powerful at high-redshift (z>=3.5), where SpIES recovers 94% of confirmed quasars, whereas WISE only recovers 25%.