Talk Title and Abstract:
The DESI Bright Galaxy Survey: from target selection to scientific analyses
The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) will measure redshifts for 20 millions of high redshift (z > 0.5) galaxies and quasars under dark time conditions using a 5000-fibre spectrograph on the 4-meter Mayall Telescope in the US. However, under lunar conditions that are too bright for good observations of these faint objects, DESI will observe a complete magnitude-limited survey of lower redshift galaxies (z<0.5 with a median z~0.2) called the Bright Galaxy Survey (BGS). The BGS sample of galaxies will be 1) two magnitudes fainter than the limit of the SDSS, 2) an order of magnitude larger than SDSS I and II, 3) the DESI’s densest galaxy sample to z~0.45.
In this talk, I will present the target selection, catalogue and clustering properties of the DESI BGS targets from the final release of the Legacy Imaging Surveys. Finally, I will mention examples of the science studies I am interested in with this sample and some other projects, from cosmological constraints to galaxy properties and their connection with the cosmic web.
Would you like to join this Zoom seminar? Please email Donna Hayes.