LIGHTS. Limitations of Far-Infrared Tracers for Galactic Cirrus Mitigation in the Era of Ultra-Deep Imaging
Abstract
Current and forthcoming deep optical imaging surveys are reaching surface brightness levels fainter than 30 mag/arcsec2, where Galactic cirrus emission becomes a significant contaminant. This poses a major challenge for the study of extremely low-surface-brightness extragalactic structures. We investigate the relationship between far-infrared emission, as traced by the Herschel 250 μm band, and optical surface brightness in the Sloan \textit{g}- and \textit{r}-bands. We find that, for Galactic cirrus with μg≳~27 mag/arcsec2, a linear relation is consistent with the data, assuming optically thin dust, with optical cirrus emission amounting to ∼0.1\% of the far-infrared flux. Using Herschel far-infrared data to trace Galactic cirrus enables its identification over wide areas, but at the cost of significantly reducing spatial resolution. This limitation introduces source confusion and restricts the effective surface brightness depth that can be robustly probed in optical data. We show that, when cirrus emission is modeled using Herschel 250 μm data, the limiting surface brightness is μV∼~28 mag/arcsec2, substantially shallower than the nominal depth of surveys such as LIGHTS or the 10-year coadd LSST (μV∼~30.5 mag/arcsec2). These results highlight a fundamental limitation in the use of currently available far-infrared data for cirrus mitigation in ultra-deep optical imaging, and emphasize the need for higher-resolution cirrus tracers to fully exploit the depth of upcoming surveys.
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BibTeX
@misc{kaboud2026lights,
title = {{LIGHTS. Limitations of Far-Infrared Tracers for Galactic Cirrus Mitigation in the Era of Ultra-Deep Imaging}},
author = {Ouldouz Kaboud and Ignacio Trujillo and Ignacio Ruiz Cejudo and S. Zahra Hosseini-ShahiSavandi and Mireia Montes and Sergio Guerra Arencibia and Mauro D'Onofrio and Dennis Zaritsky and Javier Roman and Nushkia Chamba and Giulia Golini and Chen-Yu Chuang and Minh Ngoc Le and Carlos Marrero-de la Rosa and Zahra Sharbaf and Richard Donnerstein and Sepideh Eskandarlou and Raul Infante-Sainz and Garreth Martin and Samane Raji and Nafise Sedighi},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.00463},
eprint = {2610.00463},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.00463},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - LIGHTS. Limitations of Far-Infrared Tracers for Galactic Cirrus Mitigation in the Era of Ultra-Deep Imaging
AU - Ouldouz Kaboud
AU - Ignacio Trujillo
AU - Ignacio Ruiz Cejudo
AU - S. Zahra Hosseini-ShahiSavandi
AU - Mireia Montes
AU - Sergio Guerra Arencibia
AU - Mauro D'Onofrio
AU - Dennis Zaritsky
AU - Javier Roman
AU - Nushkia Chamba
AU - Giulia Golini
AU - Chen-Yu Chuang
AU - Minh Ngoc Le
AU - Carlos Marrero-de la Rosa
AU - Zahra Sharbaf
AU - Richard Donnerstein
AU - Sepideh Eskandarlou
AU - Raul Infante-Sainz
AU - Garreth Martin
AU - Samane Raji
AU - Nafise Sedighi
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/01
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.00463
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.00463
AB - Current and forthcoming deep optical imaging surveys are reaching surface brightness levels fainter than 30 mag/arcsec^2, where Galactic cirrus emission becomes a significant contaminant. This poses a major challenge for the study of extremely low-surface-brightness extragalactic structures. We investigate the relationship between far-infrared emission, as traced by the Herschel 250 μm band, and optical surface brightness in the Sloan \textit{g}- and \textit{r}-bands. We find that, for Galactic cirrus with μ_g≳~27 mag/arcsec^2, a linear relation is consistent with the data, assuming optically thin dust, with optical cirrus emission amounting to ∼0.1\% of the far-infrared flux. Using Herschel far-infrared data to trace Galactic cirrus enables its identification over wide areas, but at the cost of significantly reducing spatial resolution. This limitation introduces source confusion and restricts the effective surface brightness depth that can be robustly probed in optical data. We show that, when cirrus emission is modeled using Herschel 250 μm data, the limiting surface brightness is μ_V∼~28 mag/arcsec^2, substantially shallower than the nominal depth of surveys such as LIGHTS or the 10-year coadd LSST (μ_V∼~30.5 mag/arcsec^2). These results highlight a fundamental limitation in the use of currently available far-infrared data for cirrus mitigation in ultra-deep optical imaging, and emphasize the need for higher-resolution cirrus tracers to fully exploit the depth of upcoming surveys.
ER -