Stellar masses from the CANDELS survey: the GOODS-South and UDS fields
  We present the public release of the stellar mass catalogs for the GOODS-S
and UDS fields obtained using some of the deepest near-IR images available,
achieved as part of the Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy
Survey (CANDELS) project. We combine the effort from ten different teams, who
computed the stellar masses using the same photometry and the same redshifts.
Each team adopted their preferred fitting code, assumptions, priors, and
parameter grid. The combination of results using the same underlying stellar
isochrones reduces the systematics associated with the fitting code and other
choices. Thanks to the availability of different estimates, we can test the
effect of some specific parameters and assumptions on the stellar mass
estimate. The choice of the stellar isochrone library turns out to have the
largest effect on the galaxy stellar mass estimates, resulting in the largest
distributions around the median value (with a semi interquartile range larger
than 0.1 dex). On the other hand, for most galaxies, the stellar mass estimates
are relatively insensitive to the different parameterizations of the star
formation history. The inclusion of nebular emission in the model spectra does
not have a significant impact for the majority of galaxies (less than a factor
of 2 for ~80% of the sample). Nevertheless, the stellar mass for the subsample
of young galaxies (age < 100 Myr), especially in particular redshift ranges
(e.g., 2.2 < z < 2.4, 3.2 < z < 3.6, and 5.5 < z < 6.5), can be seriously
overestimated (by up to a factor of 10 for < 20 Myr sources) if nebular
contribution is ignored.
