Abstract: 

Deep imaging is the next frontier for many studies in galaxy evolution and cosmology. From the evolution of galactic discs with cosmic time to the structure of stellar halos and the intracluster light, including the traces of their assembly (tidal tails, shells, faint satellites) deep and wide imaging surveys fill the required gap in the observational space, providing strong tests for the cosmological ΛCDM scenario. Nevertheless, the technical challenge of unveil structures several orders of magnitude dimmer than the sky background can only be tackled with careful statistics and a good observational strategy. In a recent study, we present a new reduction scheme for the near-IR Hubble Ultra Deep Field which improves the low surface brightnesslimits of the mosaics by several magnitudes and recovers a significant amount of light on the outskirts of the galaxies in deepest image of the Universe. The presented methods are directly applicable to multiple space NIR and optical imaging surveys, including ESA/Euclid, JWST and Messier.