First science results from UVCANDELS
Abstract
UVCANDELS is a cycle 26 164 orbit HST Treasury Program consisting of WFC3/F275W with ACS/F435W in parallel, on the four premier CANDELS fields: GOODS-N, GOODS-S, EGS, and COSMOS. This amounts to an area of ~430 sq. arcmin with a point-source 5-sigma depth of 27 ABmag, quadrupling the UV coverage in legacy fields when combined with archival data. This unique treasury dataset will enable a variety of scientific investigations, greatly augmenting the legacy value of JWST's CANDELS-field observations. (1) By spatially resolving the clumpy structures at sub-kiloparsec scale in star-forming regions at 0.5 < z < 2, we will understand the key assembly processes of normal galaxies at cosmic noon. UV morphology of star formation will also provide crucial constraints to models of star formation driven by dissipative gas accretion at cosmic noon. (2) By combining the deepest Herschel and Spitzer far/mid-IR observations with our UV dataset, we will trace the evolution of dust content in galaxies out to z~1 and develop a comprehensive view of obscured and unobscured star formation. (3) These observations will provide an unprecedented view of star formation in dwarf galaxies at z < 0.8 in a variety of environments. We will quantify the environmental effects in shaping their star-formation history. (4) The rest-frame UV data help break the degeneracy between age, dust and metallicity in SED fitting and thus enables the investigation of the quenching mechanisms of star formation in massive early type galaxies. (5) We will constrain the escape fraction of ionizing radiation from a large sample of galaxies at z~2.5, that are highly likely analogs of the sources responsible for reionizing the Universe. In addition, UVCANDELS will provide improved photometric redshifts (reducing the number of catastrophic failures by a factor of 2.4) and ground-based U-band followup observations in these legacy fields. Here we present the current status of data acquisition, highlight our data reduction methods optimized for WFC3/UVIS imaging, and show the initial science results.
- Publication:
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American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #235
- Pub Date:
- January 2020
- Bibcode:
- 2020AAS...23542603W