SCUBA-2 Cosmology Legacy Survey

This is the largest survey of its kind at 850um, increasing the sample size of 850um selected submillimetre galaxies by an order of magnitude. The wide 850um survey component of S2CLS covers the extragalactic fields: UKIDSS-UDS, COSMOS, Akari-NEP, Extended Groth Strip, Lockman Hole North, SSA22 and GOODS-North.

The average 1{sigma} depth of S2CLS is 1.2mJy/beam, approaching the SCUBA-2 850um confusion limit, which we determine to be {sigma}_c_~=0.8mJy/beam. We measure the 850um number counts, reducing the Poisson errors on the differential counts to approximately 4 per cent at S850~=3mJy. With several independent fields, we investigate field-to-field variance, finding that the number counts on 0.5{deg}-1{deg} scales are generally within 50 per cent of the S2CLS mean for S850>3mJy, with scatter consistent with the Poisson and estimated cosmic variance uncertainties, although there is a marginal (2{sigma}) density enhancement in GOODS-North.