Astronomical surveys
How did galaxies assemble and evolve? What is the nature of the dark components of the Universe? Progress in such fundamental questions is often driven by new survey facilities and advanced analysis methods. We have entered the era where the next-generation surveys are collecting massive amounts of data, allowing us to statistically tackle many unsolved and new research questions.
Our research team is a member of the following ongoing and future galaxy surveys. In all those surveys, we are contributing to the survey preparation or helping to develop and create the key data products for scientific exploitation. Our members are actively participating in the scientific exploitation using the data collected by the surveys.
The 4MOST is a fibre-fed spectroscopic survey facility on the ESO Vista telescope, which offers a large enough field-of-view to survey a large fraction of the southern sky in a few years. The facility will be able to simultaneously obtain spectra of 2436 objects distributed over a hexagonal field-of-view of 4.2 square degrees. This high multiplex of 4MOST, combined with its high spectral resolution, will help to unravel the origin of our home galaxy. The instrument will have enough wavelength coverage to secure velocities of extra-galactic objects over a large red¬shift range, thus enabling measurements of the evolution of galaxies, black holes, and the structure of the Universe. This exceptional instrument enables many scientific goals, but the design is especially intended to complement three key all-sky, space-based observatories: Gaia, Euclid, and eROSITA.
Our team significantly contributes to the 4MOST survey strategy infrastructure working group activities. Team leader Prof. Elmo Tempel was responsible for developing the key algorithms for the 4MOST survey operations: the 4MOST Visit Planner (Tempel et al. 2020b), a probabilistic fibre-to-target assignment algorithm (Tempel et al. 2020a) and a long-term scheduler algorithm. These algorithms are the key to optimise the scientific return of the 4MOST survey.
Link: 4MOST web site
4HS will obtain spectra and redshifts for more than five million galaxies with high and unbiased completeness across the full southern hemisphere, to define the benchmark reference sample of galaxies at low redshift (z<0.15). The result is a dataset with exceptional legacy value with wide applicability. In combination with other flagship surveys including VRO-LSST, VHS, WISE, Euclid, ASKAP/MeerKAT/SKA, 4HS will establish a transformative laboratory for studying the baryon cycle within and around galaxies as a function of galaxy/halo mass, as well as local/large-scale environment. At the same time, 4HS cosmology will measure the cosmic velocity field from the peculiar velocities of about 500000 massive early-type galaxies. By mapping mass and motion on the largest possible scales, 4HS will reveal a complete picture of gravitational collapse and cosmic structure formation in the Local Volume.
Our team is part of the 4HS survey and contributes significantly to the survey design. Team leader Prof. Elmo Tempel is an Operations Scientist in the 4HS being responsible for the survey strategy design and successful execution.
Link: 4HS web site
WAVES is a densely packed spectroscopic survey intended to study the underlying structure of the Universe. We plan to reveal the dark matter distribution and its recent evolution by finding and weighing the galaxy groups within our survey regions. We will use the locations and masses of the groups, pairs and galaxies to reconstruct a direct map of the underlying dark matter distribution that underpins our Universe. Further goals are to explore the dwarf galaxy regime in the local Universe, to search for the missing baryons, and to study how galaxy properties and evolution are accelerated or retarded by the haloes in which they reside.
Our Team members are part of the WAVES team. We are contributing to constructing the galaxy group and filament catalogues for the WAVES.
Link: WAVES web site
J-PAS is an unprecedented photometric sky survey in 59 colours, using a set of broad, intermediate and narrow band filters. J-PAS will discover an unprecedented number of stars, galaxies, supernovas, quasars and solar system objects, which will be mapped with exquisite accuracy. The innovative designs of the J-PAS camera and filter system will allow us to map the positions of hundreds of millions of galaxies in the sky, providing a complete map of the Universe down to small angular scales.
Our team is developing the photometric redshift algorithm designed for the J-PAS unique narrow-band filters. Utilising the full photometric redshift posterior of individual galaxies, we will map the various cosmic web elements – groups, filaments, voids, and superclusters.
Link: J-PAS web site
