The WFC3 Infrared Spectroscopic Parallel (WISP) Survey
  We present the WFC3 Infrared Spectroscopic Parallel (WISP) Survey. WISP is
obtaining slitless, near-infrared grism spectroscopy of ~ 90 independent,
high-latitude fields by observing in the pure parallel mode with Wide Field
Camera-3 on the Hubble Space Telescope for a total of ~ 250 orbits. Spectra are
obtained with the G102 (lambda=0.8-1.17 microns, R ~ 210) and G141 grisms
(lambda=1.11-1.67 microns, R ~ 130), together with direct imaging in the J- and
H-bands (F110W and F140W, respectively). In the present paper, we present the
first results from 19 WISP fields, covering approximately 63 square arc
minutes. For typical exposure times (~ 6400 sec in G102 and ~ 2700 sec in
G141), we reach 5-sigma detection limits for emission lines of 5 x 10^(-17)
ergs s^(-1) cm^(-2) for compact objects. Typical direct imaging 5sigma-limits
are 26.8 and 25.0 magnitudes (AB) in F110W and F140W, respectively. Restricting
ourselves to the lines measured with highest confidence, we present a list of
328 emission lines, in 229 objects, in a redshift range 0.3 < z < 3. The
single-line emitters are likely to be a mix of Halpha and [OIII]5007,4959 A,
with Halpha predominating. The overall surface density of high-confidence
emission-line objects in our sample is approximately 4 per arcmin^(2).These
first fields show high equivalent width sources, AGN, and post starburst
galaxies. The median observed star formation rate of our Halpha selected sample
is 4 Msol/year. At intermediate redshifts, we detect emission lines in galaxies
as faint as H_140 ~ 25, or M_R < -19, and are sensitive to star formation rates
down to less than 1 Msol/year. The slitless grisms on WFC3 provide a unique
opportunity to study the spectral properties of galaxies much fainter than L*
at the peak of the galaxy assembly epoch.
