WISH, the Wide-field Imaging Surveyor for High-redshifts
Abstract
WISH, the Wide-field Imaging Surveyor for High-redshifts, is an infrared Japanese (JAXA/ISAS) space mission concept to conduct very deep and wide-field infrared cosmological surveys at wavelengths from 1-5um to study the properties of galaxies at very high redshift, beyond the epoch of cosmic reionization. Our group at CfA has proposed to the NASA SALMON-2 Mission of Opportunity to provide the characterized focal plane for WISH, building on our experience with Spitzer -IRAC. The WISH mission concept has been developed and studied since 2008, and will be proposed for the upcoming JAXA/ISAS opportunity. WISH has a 1.5m-diameter primary mirror and a wide-field imager covering 850 sq-arcmin, with a pixel scale of 0.155 arcsec for 18um pitch, which fully samples the diffraction-limited image at 1.5um. The telescope is passive cooled and the baseline focal plane uses Teledyne H2RG arrays with a total coverage of about 128 million pixels, although alternatives are being evaluated. The main WISH scientific program is the Ultra Deep Survey (UDS) covering 100 sq-deg down to 28AB mag in at least in five broad infrared bands between about 1-5um. We expect to detect 10^4-5 galaxies at z=8-9, 10^3-4 galaxies at z= 11-12, and 50-100 galaxies at z> 14, many of which are likely to be targets for deep spectroscopy with JWST and extremely large ground-based telescopes. Another main science goal of the mission is the detection of type Ia SNe; our planned, recurrent deep observations will be able to detect them and monitor their light curves in rest-frame infrared wavelengths. During the mission’s 5 year observation lifetime, we expect to detect and monitor >2000 type-Ia SNe up to z ~2. WISH also conducts an Ultra Wide Survey, covering 1000sq-deg down to 24-25AB mag, and an Extreme Survey, covering a limited number of fields of view down to 29-30AB mag. We here report the progress of the WISH project including the basic telescope and satellite design.
- Publication:
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American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #221
- Pub Date:
- January 2013
- Bibcode:
- 2013AAS...22134102F