Collaborative Research: The Massive and Distant Clusters of WISE Survey 2

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This project is a collaborative project between the University of Florida and the University of Missouri Kansas City to search for galaxy clusters and protoclusters in the distant Universe, back to the time when the first clusters were forming. The survey data will allow for detailed studies of the most massive galaxies in the universe at the time when they were rapidly growing. The program is based upon catalogs created by NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), a space-based observatory that performed an all-sky survey in the infrared. Combining the WISE data with catalogs from the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) on the Blanco telescope in Chile will allow the team to determine where the first clusters are forming in a 3D volume of the universe. The technique has already been tested and has correctly identified known clusters from the IRAC Distant Cluster Survey. The project also includes a joint virtual public viewing night program at both institutions using remote observing from the Rosemary Hill Observatory. This plan enables public engagement during the pandemic and will expand the reach of public observing programs in both states post-covid. This project will result in a program to detect and characterize the massive galaxy cluster population at 0.5z2 over 10,480 sq. degrees. The proposed program, the Massive and Distant Clusters of WISE Survey 2 (MaDCoWS2) builds upon a successful previous cluster survey by the same team, which focused upon galaxy clusters at z~1. The cluster sample resulting from the MaDCoWS2 program will enable detailed investigations of the evolution of massive galaxies in the most overdense environments since the epoch of peak star formation and rapid mass assembly. By extending the redshift baseline to z = 2, the project will reach into the era of protoclusters, in which the first massive clusters are just forming and embedded in larger scale protocluster environments comprised of dense filaments and less massive groups that will be accreted by the central clusters at later times. The foundation for this program is CatWISE, a program to create deep catalogs exploiting the full depth of NASA Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) data at 3.4 and 4.6 microns. A combination of optical photometry will be used from large Dark Energy Camera (DECam) data and WISE photometry from the CatWISE2020 catalog to compute Bayesian photometric redshift probability distributions for the CatWISE2020 galaxy sample, and then the PZWav code will be used to detect cluster scale overdensities within a 3D data cube. The PIs will foster the career development of the students working on this project. This research will be complemented by the outreach programs. The team will initiate and run a joint virtual public night program at their institutions using remote observing from the Rosemary Hill Observatory. This plan enables public engagement during the pandemic and will expand the reach of public observing programs in both states post-covid.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.