http://inspirehep.net/record/1084324/files/arXiv:1201.2434.pdf

Observational probes of cosmic acceleration

The Next Generation Virgo Cluster Survey (NGVS) is a program that uses the 1 deg2 MegaCam instrument on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope to carry out a comprehensive optical imaging survey of the Virgo cluster, from its core to its virial radius—covering a total area of 104 deg2—in the u*griz bandpasses. Thanks to a dedicated data acquisition strategy and processing pipeline, the NGVS reaches a point-source depth of g ≈ 25.9 mag (10σ) and a surface brightness limit of μ g ~ 29 mag arcsec–2 (2σ above the mean sky level), thus superseding all previous optical studies of this benchmark galaxy cluster. In this paper, we give an overview of the technical aspects of the survey, such as areal coverage, field placement, choice of filters, limiting magnitudes, observing strategies, data processing and calibration pipelines, survey timeline, and data products. We also describe the primary scientific topics of the NGVS, which include: the galaxy luminosity and mass functions; the color-magnitude relation; galaxy scaling relations; compact stellar systems; galactic nuclei; the extragalactic distance scale; the large-scale environment of the cluster and its relationship to the Local Supercluster; diffuse light and the intracluster medium; galaxy interactions and evolutionary processes; and extragalactic star clusters. In addition, we describe a number of ancillary programs dealing with "foreground" and "background" science topics, including the study of high-inclination trans-Neptunian objects; the structure of the Galactic halo in the direction of the Virgo Overdensity and Sagittarius Stream; the measurement of cosmic shear, galaxy-galaxy, and cluster lensing; and the identification of distant galaxy clusters, and strong-lensing events.

/pdf/the-next-generation-virgo-cluster-survey-ngvs-i-introduction-5d05cktjjs.pdf

The next generation virgo cluster survey (ngvs). i. introduction to the survey

We present the PRIsm MUlti-object Survey (PRIMUS), a spectroscopic faint galaxy redshift survey to z ~ 1. PRIMUS uses a low-dispersion prism and slitmasks to observe ~2500 objects at once in a 0.18 deg2 field of view, using the Inamori Magellan Areal Camera and Spectrograph camera on the Magellan I Baade 6.5 m telescope at Las Campanas Observatory. PRIMUS covers a total of 9.1 deg2 of sky to a depth of i AB ~ 23.5 in seven different deep, multi-wavelength fields that have coverage from the Galaxy Evolution Explorer, Spitzer, and either XMM or Chandra, as well as multiple-band optical and near-IR coverage. PRIMUS includes ~130,000 robust redshifts of unique objects with a redshift precision of σ z /(1 + z) ~ 0.005. The redshift distribution peaks at z ~ 0.6 and extends to z = 1.2 for galaxies and z = 5 for broad-line active galactic nuclei. The motivation, observational techniques, fields, target selection, slitmask design, and observations are presented here, with a brief summary of the redshift precision; a forthcoming paper presents the data reduction, redshift fitting, redshift confidence, and survey completeness. PRIMUS is the largest faint galaxy survey undertaken to date. The high targeting fraction (~80%) and large survey size will allow for precise measures of galaxy properties and large-scale structure to z ~ 1.

http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0004-637X/741/1/8/pdf

The PRIsm MUlti-object Survey (PRIMUS). I. Survey Overview and Characteristics

The Blanco Cosmology Survey (BCS) is a 60 night imaging survey of ~80 deg2 of the southern sky located in two fields: (α, δ) = (5 hr, –55°) and (23 hr, –55°). The survey was carried out between 2005 and 2008 in griz bands with the Mosaic2 imager on the Blanco 4 m telescope. The primary aim of the BCS survey is to provide the data required to optically confirm and measure photometric redshifts for Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect selected galaxy clusters from the South Pole Telescope and the Atacama Cosmology Telescope. We process and calibrate the BCS data, carrying out point-spread function-corrected model-fitting photometry for all detected objects. The median 10σ galaxy (point-source) depths over the survey in griz are approximately 23.3 (23.9), 23.4 (24.0), 23.0 (23.6), and 21.3 (22.1), respectively. The astrometric accuracy relative to the USNO-B survey is ~45 mas. We calibrate our absolute photometry using the stellar locus in grizJ bands, and thus our absolute photometric scale derives from the Two Micron All Sky Survey, which has ~2% accuracy. The scatter of stars about the stellar locus indicates a systematic floor in the relative stellar photometric scatter in griz that is ~1.9%, ~2.2%, ~2.7%, and ~2.7%, respectively. A simple cut in the AstrOmatic star-galaxy classifier spread_model produces a star sample with good spatial uniformity. We use the resulting photometric catalogs to calibrate photometric redshifts for the survey and demonstrate scatter δz/(1 + z) = 0.054 with an outlier fraction η < 5% to z ~ 1. We highlight some selected science results to date and provide a full description of the released data products.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0004-637X/757/1/83/pdf

The blanco cosmology survey: data acquisition, processing, calibration, quality diagnostics, and data release

We use the deepest and the most comprehensive photometric data currently available for GOODS-South (GOODS-S) galaxies to measure their photometric redshifts. The photometry includes VLT/VIMOS (U band), HST/ACS (F435W, F606W, F775W, and F850LP bands), VLT/ISAAC (J, H, and K{sub s} bands), and four Spitzer/IRAC channels (3.6, 4.5, 5.8, and 8.0 {mu}m). The catalog is selected in the z band (F850LP) and photometry in each band is carried out using the recently completed TFIT algorithm, which performs point-spread function (PSF) matched photometry uniformly across different instruments and filters, despite large variations in PSFs and pixel scales. Photometric redshifts are derived using the GOODZ code, which is based on the template fitting method using priors. The code also implements 'training' of the template spectral energy distribution (SED) set, using available spectroscopic redshifts in order to minimize systematic differences between the templates and the SEDs of the observed galaxies. Our final catalog covers an area of 153 arcmin{sup 2} and includes photometric redshifts for a total of 32,505 objects. The scatter between our estimated photometric and spectroscopic redshifts is {sigma} = 0.040 with 3.7% outliers to the full z-band depth of our catalog, decreasing to {sigma} = 0.039 and 2.1% outliers at amore » magnitude limit m{sub z} < 24.5. This is consistent with the best results previously published for GOODS-S galaxies, however, the present catalog is the deepest yet available and provides photometric redshifts for significantly more objects to deeper flux limits and higher redshifts than earlier works. Furthermore, we show that the photometric redshifts estimated here for galaxies selected as dropouts are consistent with those expected based on the Lyman break technique.« less

/pdf/a-detailed-study-of-photometric-redshifts-for-goods-south-5ag71jwb1m.pdf

A Detailed Study of Photometric Redshifts for GOODS-South Galaxies

In order to enlarge publicly available optical cluster catalogs, in particular at high redshift, we have performed a systematic search for clusters of galaxies in the CFHTLS. We used the Le Phare photometric redshifts for the galaxies detected with magnitude limits of i'=25 and 23 for the Deep and Wide fields respectively. We then constructed galaxy density maps in photometric redshift bins of 0.1 based on an adaptive kernel technique and detected structures with SExtractor. In order to assess the validity of our cluster detection rates, we applied a similar procedure to galaxies in Millennium simulations. We measured the correlation function of our cluster candidates. We analyzed large scale properties and substructures by applying a minimal spanning tree algorithm both to our data and to the Millennium simulations. We have detected 1200 candidate clusters with various masses (minimal masses between 1.0 10$^{13}$ and 5.5 10$^{13}$ and mean masses between 1.3 10$^{14}$ and 12.6 10$^{14}$ M$_\odot$), thus notably increasing the number of known high redshift cluster candidates. We found a correlation function for these objects comparable to that obtained for high redshift cluster surveys. We also show that the CFHTLS deep survey is able to trace the large scale structure of the universe up to z$\geq$1. Our detections are fully consistent with those made in various CFHTLS analyses with other methods. We now need accurate mass determinations of these structures to constrain cosmological parameters.

/pdf/galaxy-cluster-searches-by-photometric-redshifts-in-the-2lgpwrgesi.pdf

C. Arnouts

Papers

Galaxy cluster searches by photometric redshifts in the CFHTLS