Optical Spectroscopic Survey of High-latitude WISE-selected Sources

We report on the results of an optical spectroscopic survey at high Galactic latitude (|b| >= 30°) of a sample of WISE-selected targets, grouped by WISE W1 (λ_eff = 3.4 μm) flux, which we use to characterize the sources WISE detected. We observed 762 targets in 10 disjoint fields centered on ultraluminous infrared galaxy candidates using DEIMOS on Keck II. We find 0.30 ± 0.02 galaxies arcmin^-2 with a median redshift of z = 0.33 ± 0.01 for the sample with W1 >= 120 μJy. The foreground stellar densities in our survey range from 0.23 ± 0.07 arcmin^-2 to 1.1 ± 0.1 arcmin^-2 for the same sample. We obtained spectra that produced science grade redshifts for >=90% of our targets for sources with W1 flux >=120 μJy that also had an i-band flux >~ 18 μJy. We used this for targeting very preliminary data reductions available to the team in 2010 August. Our results therefore present a conservative estimate of what is possible to achieve using WISE's Preliminary Data Release for the study of field galaxies.