The Dragonfly Wide Field Survey. I. Telescope, Survey Design and Data
  Characterization
  We present a description of the Dragonfly Wide Field Survey (DWFS), a deep
photometric survey of a wide area of sky. The DWFS covers 330 $\mathrm{deg}^2$
in the equatorial GAMA fields and the Stripe 82 fields in the SDSS $g$ and $r$
bands. It is carried out with the 48-lens Dragonfly Telephoto Array, a
telescope that is optimized for the detection of low surface brightness
emission. The main goal of the survey is to study the dwarf galaxy population
beyond the Local Group. In this paper, we describe the survey design and show
early results. We reach $1\sigma$ depths of $\mu_g\approx 31$ mag arcsec$^{-2}$
on arcminute scales and show that Milky Way satellites such as Sextans, Bootes,
and Ursa Major should be detectable out to $D\gtrsim 10$ Mpc. We also provide
an overview of the elements and operation of the 48-lens Dragonfly telescope
and a detailed description of its data reduction pipeline. The pipeline is
fully automated, with individual frames subjected to a rigorous series of
quality tests. The sky subtraction is performed in two stages, ensuring that
emission features with spatial scales up to $\sim 0.^{\circ}9 \times
0.^{\circ}6$ are preserved. The DWFS provides unparalleled sensitivity to low
surface brightness features on arcminute scales.
