Alumni Association
Dr. Gavin Dalton (Oxford University)
23 January 2012
Joint Research Project
Project Title: Revealing the violent epoch of the Universe with FMOS
Japanese Lead Scientist: Professor Kouji Ohta, Division of Physics and Astronomy, Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University
UK Counterpart: Dr. Gavin Dalton, Department of Physics, Oxford University
Project Duration: April 2010 to 2012
Description:
The Fibre Multi-Object Spectrograph (FMOS) was built by a Japan-UK collaboration (Kyoto University, The National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ), The University of Oxford, The University of Durham, and the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council. The instrument is located on NAOJ's 8.3m telescope on the island of Hawai'i and provides simultaneous infrared spectroscopy of up to 400 individual astronomical targets within a half-degree field on the sky. The instrument was commissioned in 2009, and the JSPS programme, awarded in December 2009, began as a scientific follow-up to the instrumentation programme, and was aimed to facilitate the design and submission of a large collaborative research programme to provide the best scientific exploitation of this unique instrument. The programme requested JSPS funding of ¥5M for travel of Japanese participants to the UK, and involved researchers from:
Kyoto University
Tohoku University
NAOJ, Mitaka
NAOJ, Hawai'i
University of Tokyo
Ehime University
The University of Oxford
The University of Edinburgh
The University of Durham
The University of Nottingham
The University of Hertfordshire
Liverpool John Moores University
The Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
Along with a number of individual travel visits, the main event of the programme was a workshop held in Oxford, UK, in July 2010 with 22 participants. This workshop finalised the proposal for a large survey programme, which was reviewed by the Subaru telescope Science Advisory Committee, and approved in the Summer of 2011. The project (FASTSOUND) has been allocated 40 nights of time with Subaru to obtain spectra of up to 30,000 faint galaxies at a time when the Universe was roughly half it's present age. The relative positions of these galaxies can be used to determine a measure of the rate of growth of Cosmic Structure in this epoch, and to place constraints of the evolution and nature of the phenomenon that is commonly known as Dark Energy.
To date there are three joint scientific papers directly arising from this collaboration, based on initial data that was obtained to help with defining the final survey parameters. Full survey observations began in September 2011 and will extend through to May of 2013.
PDF Version
