Collaborative Research: Tracking Galaxy Growth with 200,000 Spectroscopic Redshifts

该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的。Coil博士、Blanton博士和Eisenstein博士将分析他们对30万个星系的大规模调查，以了解在当前标准冷暗物质模型的背景下，星系恒星体在过去几十亿年里的生长和演化。该小组利用6.5米麦哲伦望远镜的棱镜光谱对11平方度的区域进行了调查。他们确定了星系在25亿到85亿年前的红移z，从而确定了星系的距离（0.2 z 1.2）。结合光学和近红外数据，该团队将估计恒星形成的速度和星系的恒星质量在这段时间内是如何变化的，这段时间几乎涵盖了宇宙历史的一半。他们将测量天体在天空中聚集的距离，并通过比较有活跃核的星系和没有活跃核的星系来研究星系核活动与恒星诞生率之间的关系。近距离星系对的统计数据将测试邻近星系相互合并速度的模型。三名研究生将通过参与研究得到训练。该团队将向社区发布他们的数据和目录。布兰顿博士和爱森斯坦博士在以对其他工作人员有用的形式发布大型数据目录方面有着出色的记录，例如斯隆数字巡天的“增值”目录。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).Dr Coil, Dr Blanton and Dr Eisenstein will analyze their large survey of 300,000 galaxies, to understand the growth and evolution of the stellar bodies of galaxies over the past several billion years in the context of the current standard Cold Dark Matter models. The team has surveyed a region of 11 square degrees with prism spectroscopy from the 6.5-meter Magellan telescope. They determined the redshifts z, and hence the distances, for galaxies seen as they were between 2.5 and 8.5 billion years ago (0.2 z 1.2). Combining optical and near-infrared data, the team will estimate how the rate of star formation and the stellar masses of galaxies changed over this period, which covers almost half of cosmic history. They will measure how closely the objects cluster on the sky, and investigate the relation between a galaxy's nuclear activity and its rate of starbirth by comparing galaxies with active nuclei to those without. Statistics of close galaxy pairs will test models for the rate at which nearby galaxies merge with each other. Three graduate students will be trained through their involvement in the research. The team will release their data and catalogs to the community. Dr Blanton and Dr Eisenstein have an excellent track record in releasing large catalogs of data in a form useful to other workers, such as the 'value-added' catalogs for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.