ZFOURGE

Last updated

ZFOURGE or the FourStar Galaxy Evolution Survey is a large and deep medium-band imaging survey which aims to establish an observational benchmark of galaxy properties at redshift z > 1. The survey is using a very efficient near-infrared FOURSTAR instrument on the Magellan Telescopes, surveying in all three HST legacy fields: COSMOS, CDFS, and UDS. [1]

Contents

Scientific aims

ZFOURGE aims to create a benchmark of properties at z > 1 by deriving 1-2% accurate redshifts of ~60,000 galaxies at 1 < z < 3.

While majority of L∗ galaxies are too faint for spectroscopy, which resulted in inaccurate broadband photometric redshifts in the previous times. To mend that FourStar is equipped with innovative "medium-bandwidth" filters from 1 − 1.8μm, which enable redshifts to z = 3.5.

This allows ZFOURGE to observe galaxy samples from the low mass at z > 1, to measure the value of mass and environment in transformation of galaxies, measure galaxy scaling relations. It will also explore the shape of the stellar mass function to z = 3, and find luminous galaxies at z = 6–9, and identify high-redshift 1.5 < z < 2.5 (proto)clusters. [2]

Instruments

The Fourstar Galaxy Evolution Survey (ZFOURGE) is conducted using the FourStar imager (Persson et al. 2013) on the 6.5m Magellan Baade telescope at Las Campanas Observatory. It is using medium-band filters in the near-IR (van Dokkum et al. 2009) which allows for samplings at wavelengths that bracket the Balmer break of galaxies leading to more well-constrained photometric redshifts at 1 < z < 4 than with broadband filters alone. This dataset provides a comprehensive sampling of the 0.3 – 8 micron spectral energy distribution of galaxies.

ZFOURGE is composed of three 11′ x 11′ pointings with coverage in the CDFS (Giacconi et al. 2002), COSMOS (Capak et al. 2007) and UDS (Lawrence et al. 2007). The 5sigma depth in a circular aperture of D=0.6" in the Ks band is 26.2-26.5 in the CDFS, COSMOS and UDS fields respectively at a typical seeing of ~0.4″. For more information regarding ZFOURGE consult Straatman et al. (2016). [1]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Quasar</span> Active galactic nucleus containing a supermassive black hole

A quasar is an extremely luminous active galactic nucleus (AGN). It is sometimes known as a quasi-stellar object, abbreviated QSO. The emission from an AGN is powered by a supermassive black hole with a mass ranging from millions to tens of billions of solar masses, surrounded by a gaseous accretion disc. Gas in the disc falling towards the black hole heats up and releases energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation. The radiant energy of quasars is enormous; the most powerful quasars have luminosities thousands of times greater than that of a galaxy such as the Milky Way. Quasars are usually categorized as a subclass of the more general category of AGN. The redshifts of quasars are of cosmological origin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Redshift</span> Change of wavelength in photons during travel

In physics, a redshift is an increase in the wavelength, and corresponding decrease in the frequency and photon energy, of electromagnetic radiation. The opposite change, a decrease in wavelength and increase in frequency and energy, is known as a blueshift, or negative redshift. The terms derive from the colours red and blue which form the extremes of the visible light spectrum. The main causes of electromagnetic redshift in astronomy and cosmology are the relative motions of radiation sources, which give rise to the relativistic Doppler effect, and gravitational potentials, which gravitationally redshift escaping radiation. All sufficiently distant light sources show cosmological redshift corresponding to recession speeds proportional to their distances from Earth, a fact known as Hubble's law that implies the universe is expanding.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hubble Deep Field</span> Multiple exposure image of deep space in the constellation Ursa Major

The Hubble Deep Field (HDF) is an image of a small region in the constellation Ursa Major, constructed from a series of observations by the Hubble Space Telescope. It covers an area about 2.6 arcminutes on a side, about one 24-millionth of the whole sky, which is equivalent in angular size to a tennis ball at a distance of 100 metres. The image was assembled from 342 separate exposures taken with the Space Telescope's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 over ten consecutive days between December 18 and 28, 1995.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hubble Ultra-Deep Field</span> Deep-field space image

The Hubble Ultra-Deep Field (HUDF) is a deep-field image of a small region of space in the constellation Fornax, containing an estimated 10,000 galaxies. The original data for the image was collected by the Hubble Space Telescope from September 2003 to January 2004. It includes light from galaxies that existed about 13 billion years ago, some 400 to 800 million years after the Big Bang.

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey or SDSS is a major multi-spectral imaging and spectroscopic redshift survey using a dedicated 2.5-m wide-angle optical telescope at Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico, United States. The project began in 2000 and was named after the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which contributed significant funding.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Redshift survey</span>

In astronomy, a redshift survey is a survey of a section of the sky to measure the redshift of astronomical objects: usually galaxies, but sometimes other objects such as galaxy clusters or quasars. Using Hubble's law, the redshift can be used to estimate the distance of an object from Earth. By combining redshift with angular position data, a redshift survey maps the 3D distribution of matter within a field of the sky. These observations are used to measure detailed statistical properties of the large-scale structure of the universe. In conjunction with observations of early structure in the cosmic microwave background, these results can place strong constraints on cosmological parameters such as the average matter density and the Hubble constant.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Astronomical survey</span> General map or image of a region of the sky with no specific observational target

An astronomical survey is a general map or image of a region of the sky that lacks a specific observational target. Alternatively, an astronomical survey may comprise a set of images, spectra, or other observations of objects that share a common type or feature. Surveys are often restricted to one band of the electromagnetic spectrum due to instrumental limitations, although multiwavelength surveys can be made by using multiple detectors, each sensitive to a different bandwidth.

A photometric redshift is an estimate for the recession velocity of an astronomical object such as a galaxy or quasar, made without measuring its spectrum. The technique uses photometry to determine the redshift, and hence, through Hubble's law, the distance, of the observed object.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey</span>

The UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey or UKIDSS is an astronomical survey conducted using the WFCAM wide field camera on the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. Survey observations were commenced in 2005.

A color–color diagram is a means of comparing the colors of an astronomical object at different wavelengths. Astronomers typically observe at narrow bands around certain wavelengths, and objects observed will have different brightnesses in each band. The difference in brightness between two bands is referred to as color. On color–color diagrams, the color defined by two wavelength bands is plotted on the horizontal axis, and the color defined by another brightness difference will be plotted on the vertical axis.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey</span> Astronomical survey that combines observations from 3 great NASA observatories

The Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey, or GOODS, is an astronomical survey combining deep observations from three of NASA's Great Observatories: the Hubble Space Telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope, and the Chandra X-ray Observatory, along with data from other space-based telescopes, such as XMM Newton, and some of the world's most powerful ground-based telescopes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pea galaxy</span> Possible type of luminous blue compact galaxy

A Pea galaxy, also referred to as a Pea or Green Pea, might be a type of luminous blue compact galaxy that is undergoing very high rates of star formation. Pea galaxies are so-named because of their small size and greenish appearance in the images taken by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS).

Lyman-break galaxies are star-forming galaxies at high redshift that are selected using the differing appearance of the galaxy in several imaging filters due to the position of the Lyman limit. The technique has primarily been used to select galaxies at redshifts of z = 3–4 using ultraviolet and optical filters, but progress in ultraviolet astronomy and in infrared astronomy has allowed the use of this technique at lower and higher redshifts using ultraviolet and near-infrared filters.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MACS0647-JD</span> The farthest known galaxy from the Earth in the constellation Camelopardalis

MACS0647-JD is a galaxy with a redshift of about z = 10.7, equivalent to a light travel distance of 13.26 billion light-years. If the distance estimate is correct, it formed about 427 million years after the Big Bang.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Simon Lilly</span>

Simon John Lilly FRS is a professor in the Department of Physics at ETH Zürich.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hyperion proto-supercluster</span> Galaxy cluster in the constellation Sextans

The Hyperion proto-supercluster is the largest and earliest known proto-supercluster, 5,000 times the mass of the Milky Way and seen at 20% of the current age of the universe. It was discovered in 2018 by analysing the redshifts of 10,000 objects observed with the Very Large Telescope in Chile.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Capak</span> Physicist

Peter Lawrence Capak is currently the Architect of Perception Systems at the Oculus division of Facebook. His current focus is developing machine perception technologies, sensors, displays, and compute architectures for the next generation of augmented (AR), mixed (MR) and virtual reality (VR) systems. His research has focused on using physical modeling and advanced statistical methods including artificial intelligence and machine learning to extract information from very large multi-wavelength (hyper-spectral) data sets. He has primarily used this to study structure formation in the universe, cosmology, and the nature of dark matter and dark energy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GLASS-z12</span> Lyman-break galaxy that is one of the oldest galaxies known

GLASS-z12 is a Lyman-break galaxy discovered by the Grism Lens-Amplified Survey from Space (GLASS) observing program using the James Webb Space Telescope's NIRCam in July 2022. Spectroscopic observations of GLASS-z12 by the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) in August 2022 confirmed that the galaxy has a spectroscopic redshift of 12.117±0.012, making it one of the earliest and most distant galaxies ever discovered, dating back to just 350 million years after the Big Bang, 13.6 billion years ago. ALMA observations detected an emission line associated with doubly ionized oxygen at 258.7 GHz with a significance of 5σ, suggesting that there is very low dust content in GLASS-z12, if not the early universe as well. Also based on oxygen-related measurements, the age of the galaxy is confirmed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">CEERS-93316</span> Possibly one of the oldest galaxies observed

CEERS-93316 is a high-redshift galaxy with a spectroscopic redshift z=4.9. Significantly, the redshift that was initially reported was photometric and would have made CEERS-93316 the earliest and most distant known galaxy observed.

Jeyhan Sevim Kartaltepe is an American astronomer, Associate Professor and Director of the Rochester Institute of Technology Laboratory for Multiwavelength Astrophysics. Her research considers observational astronomy and galaxy evolution. She is a lead investigator on the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science Survey and the COSMOS-Webb Survey conducted on the James Webb Space Telescope.

References

  1. 1 2 "ZFOURGE – Fourstar Galaxy Evolution Survey". zfourge.tamu.edu.
  2. "Science – ZFOURGE". zfourge.tamu.edu.