Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Jan 2012
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2012aas...21942415d&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #219, #424.15
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
The Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX) is a blind spectroscopic survey using the VIRUS instrument. VIRUS consists of 75 IFUs distributed across the 22-arcmin field of the upgraded 9.2-m HET. Each 50x50 arcsec IFU is made up of 448 1.5-arcsec fibers, and feeds a pair of spectrographs with a fixed bandpass of 350-550 nm and resolving power R 700. The IFUs have a fill-factor of 1/3 which will be filled-in by dithering. We cover 1/4.5 of our 300-square-degree main survey area with fibers. We reach m_AB 22.6 (21.5,20.7) at S/N 3 (5,10) per resolution element. With these limits, g 17 spiral galaxies will have S/N>3 per resolution element per fiber in the continuum to 2 effective radii, and emission line spectra to at least their optical radius. HETDEX will spatially resolve 4000 local galaxies to that limit without any pre-selection; an additional 9000 local galaxies will have spatially resolved spectroscopy beyond that limit. At g 19 we still obtain integrated galaxy spectra at S/N 10 per resolution element in the continuum. These spatially resolved absorption and emission spectra provide information on star formation, the state of the IGM, and stellar populations, as well as rotation curves for an unbiased galaxy sample unprecedented in size. Since a wealth of information about a galaxy's formation history is encoded in gradients across the galaxy, moving from single-fiber (SDSS-like) spectra to large samples of spatially resolved galaxy spectroscopy opens a new parameter space for future studies of galaxy formation.
Drory Niv
Fabricius Maximilian
Gebhardt Karl
Greene Joshua
HETDEX Collaboration
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