EXPLORING AN UNCHARTED PORTION OF THE UNIVERSE WITH A MUSE ULTRA DEEP FIELD

Deep MUSE data cube obtained in the MUSE Ultra Deep Field (MUDF) as part of the ESO Large Programme 1100.A-0528.
The data consists of ~150 hours on source integral field optical spectroscopy taken between August 2017 and June 2022 with the instrument in Wide Field Mode with extended wavelength coverage (from 4650Å to 9300Å).
The MUDF is centered at coordinates RA=21:42:24, DEC=-44:19:48 and covers
a 1.5 × 1.2 arcmin2 region, chosen due to the presence of two quasars at z~3.22.
The observations took advantage of the Ground Layer Adaptive Optics module (GALACSI) to correct for atmospheric turbulence and improve the image quality. The final product reaches a limiting
magnitude of 26.9 in the central regions where there is the largest number of observations (total exposure time > 80 h)
Given the separation of the two quasars is 62 arcsec, a single Wide field, which is ~60 arcsec across, is not able to fully cover both the sources. Therefore the MUDF observational strategy uses two highly overlapping pointings, one to the North-West and the other to the South-East of the field centre, creating a final elliptical-shaped field.