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Event
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Listing of Talk Abstracts
| The Javalambre PAU Astronomical Survey |
| Txitxo Benitez (IAA(CSIC)) |
| We describe a narrow band, 8000 sq.deg. survey called JPAS which will be carried out from the Javalambre Observatory, in Spain, using a new, dedicated 2.5m telescope and a camera with a pixel-covered FOV of 5 sq.deg. The main goal of the survey is measuring the scale of Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAOs). Using a set of narrow band filters it is possible to obtain photometric redshifts with enough precision, delta_z=0.003(1+z) to measure BAOs along the line of sight, what provides a direct measurement of the Hubble parameter at different redshifts, a very sensitive probe of Dark Energy. The higher precision provided by spectroscopic surveys will produce an oversampling of the BAO peak without a significant improvement on its detection. JPAS, which is scheduled to start in late 2013, will use 54 filters with 100A width, covering the interval from 3700 to 9100 A plus two broad U and Z band filters, and will reach a 5sigma, 3 arcsec aperture magnitude depth of AB= 21.5-22.5, depending on the wavelength. The NB filter photometry, combined with a proper photo-z algorithm, will provide dz~0.003(1+z) for ~100M galaxies, both early types (up to z~1.05) and late types (up to z~1.3), reaching an effective volume to measure radial BAOs of ~ 11 Gpc^3. In addition, PAU will yield high-quality photo-z (dz~0.01(1+z)) and low-resolution spectroscopy for hundreds of millions of other galaxies, including a very significant high-redshift population. The data set produced by this survey will have a huge legacy value, providing unique data for a wide range of astrophysical studies. |
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| The Multi-Wavelength Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA) survey |
| Sarah Brough (Australian Astronomical Observatory) |
| GAMA is a comprehensive, multi-wavelength galaxy survey that exploits the latest generation of wide-field survey facilities to study cosmology and galaxy formation and evolution in the local Universe. This survey brings together the unique spectroscopic capabilities of the Anglo-Australian Telescope with data from many world-class facilities working at different wavelengths, from X-ray (XMM), through ultraviolet (GALEX ) to far infrared (Herschel) and HI (Australian Square Kilometer Array) and many others. Data from these instruments is being used to construct a state-of-the-art database of ~375,000 galaxies in the local Universe over a 360 deg square region of sky. The range of scales probed will enable direct constraints of the standard CDM model by: (1) directly measuring the CDM halo mass function to very low halo masses (M_h ≃ 10^12h^−1M⊙), and its evolution to z ≃ 0.4; (2) directly measuring the galaxy stellar mass function to very low mass limits (M_star ≃ 10^7M⊙), constraining baryonic feedback processes; and, (3) quantifying the environment-dependent halo merger rate since z ≃ 0.4. The final legacy database will include ugrizY JHK imaging with sub-arcsec spatial resolution, spectroscopy, bulge-disc decompositions, and HI observations.
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| 4MOST - the 4m Multi-Object Spectroscopic Telescope for ESO |
| Roelof de Jong (Leibniz Institut für Astrophysik Potsdam (AIP)) |
| I will present 4MOST, a project to create a wide-field, multi-object spectroscopic survey facility for either the VISTA or NTT 4m telescopes of ESO that is currently moving into its Conceptual Design phase. The 4MOST facility will provide at least 1500 spectra simultaneously (goal >3000) over 2-3 degree diameter field-of-view at a spectral resolution of >5000 at 850nm and a wavelength coverage of 420-900 nm (goal 380–1000 nm). About 10-20% of the fibers will go to a dedicated R~25,000 spectrograph. The main science goals are driven by two key all-sky, space-based observatories of prime European interest: Gaia and eROSITA. Through Gaia followup 4MOST will determine the three-dimensional Galactic potential and its substructure, measure the Galactic assembly history and find 1000s of extremely metal-poor stars to constrain early galaxy formation and stellar evolution. Through eROSITA followup of X-ray galaxy clusters 4MOST will measure the evolution of large scale structure and cluster mass, providing competitive constraints on Dark Energy evolution. 4MOST will also classify >2 million eROSITA point sources, constraining the cosmic evolution of active galaxies to z=5 and the evolutionary channels of stellar populations. Other science include dynamic structure and content of nearby galaxies, follow-up of extra-galactic radio and IR surveys, and constraining Dark Energy properties through BAO measurements. The goal is to use 4MOST to perform a 5 year public survey yielding a total of 10-20 million spectra released, including their full high-level data products, in yearly increment. |
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| Gamma Ray Time Domain Astronomy |
| Neil Gehrels (NASA/GSFC) |
| The gamma-ray sky is more dynamic than in any toher wavelength band. Gamma=ray bursts, supernovai, and black hole accretors all are characterized by burst and flares. Even the Crab nebula, thought for years to be a rock-steady gamma-ray time domain astronomy with Swift, INTEGRAL and Fermi all operating. The hard X-ray through high energy gamma-ray skies are being monitored on hourly to daily time scales at sensitivities more than an order of magnitude better than every before. Highlights will be presented of the exciting and often surprising results from these missions. |
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| AGN Variability and Long-Term Monitoring |
| Robert Gibson (University of Washington) |
| New surveys such as LSST will identify over 10 million AGN and monitor them on time scales of minutes to years. A typical AGN will be observed about 1000 times over 10 years, while AGN in "deep drilling" fields will be intensively monitored over minutes to hours. Distinctive variability patterns will be used to identify AGNs independent of color-space criteria, and image-subtraction techniques will reveal nuclear activity that is blended with strong host-galaxy emission. Given the complexity of this enterprise, simulated LSST surveys will be needed to assess the quality of AGN catalogs and to determine the most effective selection metrics. We show examples from recent research that demonstrate how the wealth of information in millions of AGN light curves will be valuable for studies of AGN emission, outflows, and environments not only in the optical, but across the electromagnetic spectrum.
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| The Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX) |
| Caryl Gronwall (Pennsylvania State University) |
| The Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX) is a wide-field spectroscopic survey whose goal is to measure the expansion history of the universe in the redshift range 1.9 < z < 3.5 and constrain the evolution of dark energy, using the power
spectrum of Lyman-alpha Emitters (LAEs). This survey, which will begin in the third quarter of 2012, will be conducted with VIRUS, an optical spectrograph consisting of 75 integral-field units covering 16.5 sq. arcmin of sky and producing 33,600 spectra at a single pointing. The final HETDEX dataset will contain over 400 million spectra in the wavelength range between 350 and 550 nm, and include approximately 600,000 Lyman-alpha emitting galaxies, 250,000 stars, 25,000 AGN, and over 1.4 million additional galaxies.
Because VIRUS covers a large field of view and is operable in parallel with other HET instruments, the spectrograph will quickly produce an extremely large database for the astronomical community. We will discuss the parameters of HETDEX survey, describe its requirements and data products, and detail the challenges associated with obtaining the deep images that are required to discriminate LAEs from foreground [O II] emitters.
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| After SDSS: A high-redshift million-galaxy survey with SuMIRe-PFS |
| James E. Gunn (Princeton) |
| The need for spectroscopic complements to the many large imaging
surveys now underway and on the books is obvious. Such complementarity
was one of the great powers of the Sloan Survey. In this talk I will
review this topic and describe plans for a 2400-fiber spectrograph
called SuMIRe-PFS to be constructed by an international consortium
for the Subaru telescope. This instrument will cover the wavelength
range 3800 Angstroms to 1.3 microns simultaneously in three channels.
The planned surveys include a wide, fairly shallow BAO survey and
a much deeper galaxy evolution survey with targets from the
HyperSuprimeCam Deep survey over about 30 square degrees. The latter
will yield SDSS-like surveys in several redshift slices out to
a redshift of 2. |
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| Wide-Field HI Galaxy Surveys: ALFALFA and its Predictions for the Future |
| Martha Haynes (Cornell University) |
| Capitalizing on the huge collecting area of the Arecibo telescope and the survey capability of the 7-beam Arecibo L-band Feed Array (ALFA), the Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA (ALFALFA) extragalactic HI 21cm line survey aims to produce a census of HI-bearing objects found over 7000 square degrees of the high galactic latitude sky out to z < 0.06. With its completion, ALFALFA will provide the first robust census of gas-bearing halos over a cosmologically significant volume. The survey observations are 90% complete, and a catalog is available for almost half of the final survey area. Mimicking an effect already known for luminosity functions based on optical catalogs, the low HI mass slope of the HI mass function (HIMF) is much shallower than the corresponding slope expected by LambdaCDM for the low mass end of the halo mass function. However, we identify a class of ultracompact high velocity clouds which match the predictions for gas-bearing Local Group mini-halos. Most surprisingly, ALFALFA detects many more high HI mass objects than predicted by previous derivations of the HIMF, a result of particular importance since it directly impacts, in a positive sense, estimates of the expected HI detection rate at high z with the SKA and its pathfinders. |
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| Radio Frequency All-sky Surveys for the 21st Century |
| Andrew Hopkins (Australian Astronomical Observatory) |
| The construction of pathfinder telescopes for the Square Kilometer Array has been accompanied by significant efforts in optimising the scientific outcome from these major new facilities. It is telling to see that all of these facilities include all-sky surveys among their key science drivers and goals. I will describe the proposed "all-sky" radio continuum survey with the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) telescope, called "EMU". The primary goal of EMU is to make a deep (10 microJy rms) radio continuum survey of the entire Southern Sky at 1.4 GHz, extending as far North as +30 deg, with a 10 arcsec resolution. EMU is expected to detect and catalog about 68 million galaxies, including typical star-forming galaxies up to z=1, powerful starbursts to even greater redshifts, AGNs to the edge of the Universe, and will undoubtedly discover new classes of object. |
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| The Pan-STARRS Wide-Field Imaging Survey |
| Nick Kaiser (Institute for Astronomy, U. Hawaii) |
| Pan-STARRS is a distributed aperture approach to wide-field optical
and near-IR imaging. It employs 1.8m telescopes with a very large
field of view with 1.4 Gpixel CCD detectors. The first telescope,
PS1, has been fully operational for over a year, and has completed one
scan of the sky in the g, r, i, z and y pass-bands. In this talk
I will briefly describe the system, the design of the surveys, and
the performance that has been obtained to date with PS1. I
will then show some of the early science results that have been obtained.
These include full maps of the sky North of declination -30 at one-micron;
mapping of galactic dust from stellar reddening; microlensing in M31;
detection of hundreds of supernovae for dark-energy and supernova physics
studies, along with large samples of variability selected AGN and QSOs;
galaxy counts; detection of clusters of galaxies, both from optical
photometry alone and from optical confirmation of low-significance
X-ray detections and, last, but not least, detection of large numbers
of near earth objects, including some of the most hazardous objects
currently known. |
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| Panchromatic Studies of Galactic Stellar Populations
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| Jason Kalirai (STScI) |
| The study of resolved stellar populations in the Milky Way represents an anchor for many relations in astrophysics. High-precision, deep imaging observations of Galactic star clusters calibrate the theory of stellar evolution, wide-field surveys of the stellar halo informs hierarchical merging models, and spectroscopy of disk and bulge stars yield the history of chemical evolution processes. The most frequent observational probes of these precious systems has involved either deep pencil beam studies of specific objects (e.g., HST imaging) or utilized wide field surveys to target an ensemble of objects to shallow limits (e.g., SDSS).
The Astro 2010 Decadal Survey's prioritization of LSST and WFIRST can enable an unprecedented study of the Milky Way's resolved stellar populations, and therefore impact many areas of astrophysics. In this talk, I will discuss the potential panchromatic survey that is enabled through the synergy of these missions, and highlight the implications for our understanding of the initial mass function, hydrogen burning limit, L and T dwarf evolution, star formation law, color-magnitude relation, and stellar mass loss processes.
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| eROSITA on SRG |
| Andrea Merloni (MPE) |
| I will present an update on the eROSITA telescope that will be launched onboard of the SRG satellite, and describe in details the main scientific goals of the mission. |
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| Subaru Wide Field Imaging Survey by Hyper Suprime-Cam
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| Satoshi Miyazaki (National Astronomical Observatory of Japan) |
| Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) is a next generation wide field
camera for Subaru telescope. The field size is 1.5 degree in diameter
and the expected instrument PSF over the field is 0.35 arcsec FWHM
which enables seeing limited imaging in most of the time. The first
light will be expected by the end of 2011 and the science observing
runs will follow in early 2012 to cover up to 2000 deg^2.
We will present the current status of the development and the science
cases of HSC.
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| Astrometric Surveys in the Next Decade |
| David Monet (US Naval Observatory) |
| Gaia and LSST will do to astrometry what an asteroid did to the dinosaurs.
About 1e10 stars will have measures for parallax and proper motion (about
10% from Gaia and the rest from LSST), and the discipline of "astrometry"
will be amazingly different in 2020 than it is in 2010. Those of us whose
careers will be trashed by the end of the decade should understand what needs
to be done to verify and validate the astrometric results that these surveys
will produce, and must guide the next generation of astronomers
in understanding the issues (good and bad) associated with survey astrometry. |
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| Future Space-Based Technology for Spectroscopic Surveys |
| Massimo Robberto (STScI) |
| In order to address the most fundamental questions on the cosmic structure and
evolution, a new class of instrumental facilities has to be developed capable of taking deep
spectra of hundred of millions of faint astronomical sources. For space applications one can rely
on a limited number of techniques. The most interesting one is based on the
use of MEMS devices, pioneered by NIRSPEC on JWST and already applied on a few
ground telescopes. Using MEMS on can benefit from the enormous advances in reliability
and performance achieved by nanotechnology for commercial applications.
I will focus on the Digital Micromirror Devices (DMDs) produced by Texas
Instruments, which can be used as slit selection mechanism for astronomical multi-object
spectrographs. I will describe the potential and limitations of DMD-based spectrographs,
together with the constrains they impose on the instrument design. I will also illustrate an
alternative and simpler approach based on coded masks which may provide important
advantages over conventional slitless spectroscopy.
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| BOSS and BigBOSS |
| David Schlegel (Lawrence Berkeley Lab) |
| The Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) is a Stage III dark
energy experiment on the Sloan Telescope. For the five years from 2009-2014,
we are mapping 1.5 million galaxies at z<0.7. A simultaneous survey of 160,000 QSOs
is mapping hydrogen gas in absorption at redshifts 2 < z < 3. BOSS will
provide the definitive measurement of the low redshift (z<0.7) BAO distance scale,
and is pioneering a new method of measuring BAO at high redshift.
BigBOSS is a Stage IV dark energy experiment that will extend this map
to 20 million galaxies and every QSO in the observable universe.
The instrument is a 5000-fiber spectrograph on a 7 square degree field
of the Mayall 4-m telescope. I will describe this survey and its technical status.
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| Wide Field Capabilities at NOAO: Past, Present, & Future |
| R. Chris Smith (NOAO) |
| Although the definition of "wide field" has continuously evolved, NOAO has been consistently at the forefront of providing state-of-the-art wide-field instrumentation for the use of the astronomical community for over four decades, particularly with the construction of the two wide-field 4m telescopes on Kitt Peak and Cerro Tololo in the 1970s. The current suite of wide-field instrumentation, including the Mosaic imagers, Hydra fiber-fed spectrographs, and NEWFIRM, have been used extensively to perform large scale survey programs such as Deep Lens Survey, NOAO Deep Wide Field Survey, ESSENCE, and the NEWFIRM Medium-Band Survey. The next generation of wide-field instrumentation that NOAO will be making available, which includes DECam, ODI, and BigBOSS, will open new and exciting possibilities for large wide-field surveys, both by the teams involved in the instruments and the community at large. NOAO plans to integrate these and other capabilities into its "system-wide" support for LSST, in order to not only support science with the LSST dataset, but also support the wide range of follow-up observations desired.
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| Multi-wavelength Follow-up of Transients |
| Alicia Soderberg (Harvard University) |
| I will review lessons learned from current programs aimed at prompt follow-up of transients across the electromagnetic spectrum, drawing from observations at both ground-based facilities and satellites. |
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| Future Spectroscopic Surveys on Large Telescopes |
| Christian Veillet (Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope) |
| Wide-field multi-object spectroscopy (WFMOS) is definitely one of the key observing tools of astronomy in this coming decade(s). As demonstrated by past or existing instruments/telescopes/surveys like the AAT, BOSS or SDSS (among others), WFMOS is indeed strongly supported by hard-to-challenge science cases which now trigger projects like BigBOSS following BOSS, a WFMOS following the Dark Energy Camera/Survey, PFS-Sumire complementing HyperSuprimeCam at Subaru, HETDEX on the Hobby-Eberly Telescope, or 4MOS and other concepts on the European side (a non-exhaustive list…)
Meanwhile, an 8- to 10-m telescope entirely dedicated to WFMOS is a telescope everyone would like to have, but nobody has! This talk will look back at how this concept was presented in the past two decades and will explore how the world-wide community could gather forces to make it happen. The ngCFHT concept will be presented as an example of a facility which could become a reality by gathering relatively modest resources from potential partners toward the realization of a one-of-a-kind telescope/instrument. Such an approach seems to be wise at a time when resources are scarce. However, wisdom does not always win out! This talk will give us a chance to discuss this further…
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