The Project
zCOSMOS
is an approved Large Program on the ESO VLT. 600
hours of observation are used to carry out a major redshift survey with
the
VIMOS spectrograph on the
COSMOS field to yield
spectra for:
-
approximately 28,000 galaxies at 0.2 < z < 1.2 selected
to have I_AB < 22.5 at a sampling rate of 70%
-
approximately 12,000 galaxies at 1.2 < z < 3 with B_AB
< 25 and chosen by two colour-selection criteria (B-Z) vs. (Z-K)
and (U-B) vs. (V-R) at a sampling rate of 70%
The Science
The
primary goal of COSMOS is to understand how galaxies and AGN evolve
over
cosmic time in the context of their environment - on all scales from
groups up
to the large scale structure of filaments and voids. The power of
COSMOS
stems from:
-
the very large sample of galaxies and other classes of object
-
the representative volumes at all redshifts
-
high resolution HST images
-
complementary imaging data at X-ray, ultraviolet, optical, near- and
mid-infrared and radio wavelengths
The
specific goals of zCOSMOS are to:
-
define the large scale structure defined by the galaxies out
to redshifts z ~3
-
define and characterize group environments down to M ~10^12.5
at redshifts out to z~1 and in richer environments out to z ~3
-
use spectral diagnostics (e.g. star-formation rate,
reddening, chemical abundance of stars and gas) to characterize
individual
galaxies and populations
-
identify X-ray and radio sources and other classes of object
such as AGN down to I_AB ~25.
The
zCOSMOS team
comprises
over 70 scientists in at least 18 institutions in
Europe, the USA and Japan. The main institutes involved are in Zurich,
Marseille, Milan, Bologna, Munich, Toulouse as well as ESO itself in
Munich
and Chile. The team has several categories of member, which can briefly
be
explained as follows:
(a)
Scientific Steering Group: The relatively senior people
who are responsible for making sure that enough resources are devoted
to the
project to make it a success or who are absolutely central to its
success
e.g. by providing input photometric catalogues. There is at least one
from
each of the major data processing nodes.
(b)
Core workers: These are the additional, usually more
junior, people who are actually doing a lot of the work on the data
itself.
Together with (a) they make the project possible and thus acquire
rights to
appear as authors on papers and to participate in small groups that
lead the
main scientific analyses.
(c)
Enabling Associates: These are people, additional to
the above, who have made zCOSMOS possible less directly either through
their
major roles in VIMOS and the VVDS or in the global COSMOS
collaboration. They
have a clear moral right to participate in the project but have data
rights
which are naturally a little weaker than the above. They may not appear
on
every single paper etc.
(d)
Associated Scientists: These are people who have made
particular contributions to the project or who have particular
scientific
interests or analysis skills. As with (c) these individuals have weaker
data
rights.
Naturally,
people may migrate from one category to the
other as the project progresses, depending on their involvement in the
work.
For
convenience, there are three email exploders set up:
-
Scientific Steering Group: zcosmos-ssg@phys.ethz.ch
-
Core Team:
zcosmos-core@phys.ethz.ch
-
Associated Scientists (c) and Enabling Associates (d) : zcosmos-assoc@phys.ethz.ch
Members
of each group should be able to post emails to the
other members - others will require approval of a moderator.
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