Program: GN-2012B-C-1

Title:The Massive Distant Clusters of Wise Survey (MaDCoWS)
PI:Anthony Gonzalez
Co-I(s): Adam Stanford, Daniel Gettings, Mark Brodwin, Greg Zeimann, Peter Eisenhardt, Cosimo Fedeli, Daniel Stern

Abstract

The Massive Distant Clusters of WISE Survey is a comprehensive search of the full extragalactic sky designed to detect and characterize the most massive galaxy clusters at $1\la z\la 1.4$, with the dual aims of constraining the Gaussianity of the initial density perturbations after inflation and exploring the evolution of the oldest galaxies in the most overdense environments. The foundation for this program is data from the NASA Wide Field Infrared Explorer (WISE), an all-sky infrared survey mission. Our team has developed a modified version of the cluster detection algorithm developed by Papovich (2008) that employs color selection in the two bluest bands (3.4 and 4.6 $\mu$m) to isolate galaxies at $z\ga 1$ and identify clusters as overdensities of $L^*$ galaxies at these redshifts. The technique has been applied to the full WISE data set, and follow-up imaging during the past two semesters had demonstrated the success of this approach. During the current semester we request use of Gemini-N/GMOS to obtain spectroscopic redshifts for the 6 clusters confirmed by our optical/NIR imaging in 2011B. We also request additional optical and infrared imaging with WIYN to complete our northern hemisphere imaging program, using $I$ and $K_s$ photometry to confirm cluster candidates and identify a subset of systems for further follow-up.

Publications using this program's data