Day 882

Thursday.


1505.01157
Photometric redshifts and model spectral energy distributions of galaxies from the SDSS-III DR10 data
Greisel, Seitz, Drory, Bender, Saglia, Snigula

Construct a set of model spectra specifically designed to match the colors of the BOSS CMASS galaxies and to be used with photo-z template fitting techniques.  As a basis, use a set of SEDs of single and composite stellar population models.  These models cannot describe well the whole color range population by the CMASS galaxies at all redshifts; they are modified by multiplying the SEDs with lambda^{-beta} for lambda>lambda_i for different values of lambda_i and beta.  When fitting these SEDs to the colors of the CMASS sample, with a burst and dust components in superposition, can recreate the location in color spaces inhabited by the CMASS galaxies.  From the best fitting models, select a small subset in a 2-d plane, where to the galaxies were mapped by a self-organizing map.  These models are used for the estimation of photo-z with a Bayesian template fitting code.  The photo-z with the novel templates have a very small outlier rate of 0.22%, a low bias <delta z/(1+z)>=2.0e-3, and scatter of sigma_68=0.026 in the rest frame.  Using the models, the galaxy colors are reproduced to ta better extent with the photo-z of this work than with photo-z of SDSS.


1505.01195
Thirty meter telescope detailed science case: 2015
Skidmore, et al

The TMT detailed science case describes the transformational science that the TMT will enable.  Planned to begin science operations in 2024, TMT will open up opportunities for revolutionary discoveries in essentially every field of astronomy, astrophysics and cosmology, seeing much fainter objects much more clearly than existing telescopes.  Per this capability, TMT's science agent fills all of space and time, from nearby comets and asteroids, to exoplanet, to the most distant galaxies, and all the way back to the very first sources of light in the Universe.  More than 150 astronomers from within the TMT partnership and beyond offered input in compiling the new 2015 Detailed science case [203 pages!].  The contributing astronomers represent the entire TMT partnership, including Caltech, the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC), the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ), the University of California, the Association of Canadian Universities for Research in Astronomy (ACURA) and US associate partner, the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA).