Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
Jan 2012
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2012aas...21933504b&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #219, #335.04
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
Scientific paper
Very large spectroscopic surveys such as the SDSS have been watersheds in our understanding of galaxy evolution. The power of these surveys is that their spectra enable astrophysical measurements while simultaneously having enough objects to explore the multivariate properties of the galaxy population. The BigBOSS instrument has the potential to become a similarly transformative tool for improving our understanding of how galaxies evolve. The BigBOSS Key Project will result in low signal-to-noise spectra for 20 million galaxies at z<1.7 over 14,000 square degrees, with one million "synchronous fibers" that are not assigned to Key Project targets and are open for community science. Calibration fields for the Key Project will provide densely sampled and deeper exposures than the main survey, over many tens of square degrees. The BigBOSS instrument itself will be a powerful PI instrument long after the Key Project is finished. It will have 5000 rapidly positioned fibers that feed a spectrograph with high throughput from 360-1040nm over a 7 square degree field of view. Here we present a sample of example community science projects that cover the range of anticipated operating modes: 1) a measure of the distribution in galaxy properties, e.g. velocity dispersion, using large numbers of well-calibrated spectra with low signal-to-noise, 2) a large extragalactic survey aimed at understanding how stars grow within dark matter halos at z<1 as a function of environment, halo mass, and galaxy star formation history, 3) A survey of the infall regions of galaxy clusters at intermediate redshift, and 4) a search for extremely rare and bright objects that may be the most intrinsically luminous galaxies in the Universe or are strongly gravitationally lensed. These examples were raised in the BigBOSS community workshop hosted by NOAO in September 2011 and can serve as an inspiration for developing community projects with BigBOSS.
Bell Eric F.
BigBOSS Collaboration
Bolton Adam S.
Rudnick Gregory
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