Program: GN-2013B-Q-8

Title:The Massive Distant Clusters of Wise Survey (MaDCoWS)
PI:Mark Brodwin
Co-I(s): Adam Stanford, Dominika Wylezalek, Anthony Gonzalez, Dan Gettings, 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 0.9 < z < 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 the all-sky infrared WISE survey (Wright et al 2010). 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 um) to isolate galaxies at z >~ 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 and spectroscopy in recent semesters have demonstrated the success of this approach. During the current semester we request use of Gemini-N/GMOS to obtain spectroscopic redshifts for eight massive, high-redshift clusters.

Publications using this program's data