Census of the Local Universe survey. I. CLU-Halpha

CLU-H{alpha} has imaged ~3{pi} of the sky (26470deg^2^) with four narrowband filters that probe a distance out to 200Mpc. We have obtained spectroscopic follow-up for galaxy candidates in 14 preliminary fields (101.6deg^2^) to characterize the limits and completeness of the survey.

In these preliminary fields, CLU can identify emission lines down to an H{alpha} flux limit of 10^-14^erg/s/cm^2^ at 90% completeness, and recovers 83% (67%) of the H{alpha} flux from cataloged galaxies in our search volume at the {Sigma}=2.5 ({Sigma}=5) color excess levels. The contamination from galaxies with no emission lines is 61% (12%) for {Sigma}=2.5 ({Sigma}=5). Also, in the regions of overlap between our preliminary fields and previous emission-line surveys, we recover the majority of the galaxies found in previous surveys and identify an additional ~300 galaxies.