SIMBAD references

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/arcmin2 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/arcmin2 to 1.1±0.1/arcmin2 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.