Stellar mass completeness as a function of redshift. Blue circles, green squares, and red triangles represent CANDELS galaxies at , , and respectively. The cut in apparent magnitude of our sample ([3.6] _lim) is marked with a vertical dashed line. Slant dotted lines show a conservative estimate of the stellar mass limit, corresponding to the ℳ /L ratio of an old SSP with A_V = 2 mag. Three crosses in the bottom-right corner of the main panel show the average x- and y-axis uncertainties in the corresponding bin of redshift. The histograms on the right (same colours and z-bins of the scattered points) show the ratio of N17 galaxies with [3.6] < [3.6] _lim over the total N17 sample. This fraction is named f_obs since they are the objects that would be observed within the magnitude limit of COSMOS2015. Below each histogram, an arrow indicates the stellar mass threshold ℳ_lim (see Sect. 4.2).