Emission-line galaxies from HETDEX pilot survey

This work is partially motivated as a pilot survey for the upcoming Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment. We describe the observations, reductions, detections, redshift classifications, line fluxes, and counterpart information for 397 emission-line galaxies detected over 169arcmin^2^ with a 3500-5800{AA} bandpass under 5{AA} full-width-half-maximum (FWHM) spectral resolution.

The survey's best sensitivity for unresolved objects under photometric conditions is between 4 and 20x10^-17^erg/s/cm^2^ depending on the wavelength, and Ly{alpha} luminosities between 3x10^42^ and 6x10^42^erg/s are detectable. This survey method complements narrowband and color-selection techniques in the search of high-redshift galaxies with its different selection properties and large volume probed. The four survey fields within the COSMOS, GOODS-N, MUNICS, and XMM-LSS areas are rich with existing, complementary data.