The Brightest of Reionizing Galaxies Survey: Design and Key Results
Abstract
The Brightest of Reionizing Galaxies survey (BoRG) is a large Hubble Space Telescope program aimed at searching very luminous (M_AB -21) galaxies at z 8 from wide-area, medium-deep observations in four filters (V, J, Y, H) reaching a median sensitivity of m_AB 27 at 5sigma over 250 arcmin2. The pure-parallel nature of BoRG allows us to obtain a census of the population of rare galaxies within the epoch of reionization (700 million years after the Big Bang) without being affected by cosmic variance. The observations carried out to date led to the identification of 7 very bright candidates, two of which have been followed-up with spectroscopic observations at Keck. BoRG has been extended for the next cycle of HST observations and will cover an additional area of about 100 arcmin2 with longer exposure time, constructing a sample of observations at different depths to optimally probe the bright end of the galaxy luminosity function at z 8. In this poster we present the survey design, its key results to date and future prospects.
- Publication:
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American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #219
- Pub Date:
- January 2012
- Bibcode:
- 2012AAS...21942812S