The Space Telescope A901/902 Galaxy Evolution Survey (STAGES): probing environmental drivers of galaxy evolution with HST
Peng, C. Y.; Gray, M. E.; Bacon, D. J.;Balogh, M. L.; Barden, M.; Barazza, F. D.;Bell, E. F.; Caldwell, J. A. R.; Haeussler, B.;Heymans, C.; Jahnke, K.; Jogee, S.; Koposov, S.;Lane, K.; McIntosh, D.; Meisenheimer, K.; Rix, H.-W.;Sanchez, S. F.; Somerville, R.; Taylor, A. N.;Wisotzki, L.; Wolf, C.; Zheng, X.;. The Space Telescope A901/902 Galaxy Evolution Survey (STAGES): probing environmental drivers of galaxy evolution with HST. American Astronomical Society Meeting 207, #22.02; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society. 2005, Vol. Vol. 37, p.1192, p. -2005.
We introduce the Space Telescope A901/902 Galaxy Evolution Survey (STAGES, PI: M. E. Gray): a large ground- and space-based observational project to map the environment and galaxy properties of the A901/902 supercluster. Our mosaic of 80 ACS images obtained with the Hubble Space telescope in Cycle 13 spans a 0.5x0.5 degree region from the 17-passband COMBO-17 photometric redshift survey, encompassing a complex structure at z=0.17. With an extensive existing multi-wavelength dataset, we will probe the dependence of galaxy morphologies, star formation properties, and degree of AGN activity on local and large-scale environment. We can accurately separate the many layers composing the supercluster: the distributions of dark matter revealed by weak lensing maps; the hot intracluster medium from deep XMM-Newton imaging; and the local galaxy density using precision photometric redshifts from COMBO-17. The synthesis of these observations will provide an exceptional laboratory with which to address the influences of dark matter, hot X-ray gas, and galaxy-galaxy interactions on the evolution of the structural, spectral, and photometric properties of galaxies across a large dynamic range of environments from near-field densities to cluster cores.
We introduce the Space Telescope A901/902 Galaxy Evolution Survey (STAGES, PI: M. E. Gray): a large ground- and space-based observational project to map the environment and galaxy properties of the A901/902 supercluster. Our mosaic of 80 ACS images obtained with the Hubble Space telescope in Cycle 13 spans a 0.5x0.5 degree region from the 17-passband COMBO-17 photometric redshift survey, encompassing a complex structure at z=0.17. With an extensive existing multi-wavelength dataset, we will probe the dependence of galaxy morphologies, star formation properties, and degree of AGN activity on local and large-scale environment. We can accurately separate the many layers composing the supercluster: the distributions of dark matter revealed by weak lensing maps; the hot intracluster medium from deep XMM-Newton imaging; and the local galaxy density using precision photometric redshifts from COMBO-17. The synthesis of these observations will provide an exceptional laboratory with which to address the influences of dark matter, hot X-ray gas, and galaxy-galaxy interactions on the evolution of the structural, spectral, and photometric properties of galaxies across a large dynamic range of environments from near-field densities to cluster cores.