WEAVE-StePS: A stellar population survey using WEAVE at WHT

Iovino, A.; B., Poggianti,; Mercurio, A.; Longhetti, M.

doi:10.1051/0004-6361/202245361

Cited by 4 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 142 publications

(119 reference statements)

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“…The comparison of simulated galaxies to observations on local rather than global scales provides a powerful and meaningful test for cosmological hydrodynamical simulations. With many large imaging and integral-field spectroscopic surveys just finished, ongoing, or about to start, such as the SAMI Galaxy Survey (Bryant et al 2015;Croom et al 2021), MaNGa (Bundy et al 2015;Abdurro'uf et al 2022a), the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys (Dey et al 2019), WEAVE-StePS (Iovino et al 2023), or the Euclid Wide Survey (Euclid Collaboration 2022), the required observational data are nowadays available. This offers the prospect of testing the simulation's fidelity in much more detail, and to identify limitations due to both particle resolution or incorrect physics implemented in the models.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The TNG50-SKIRT Atlas: Post-processing methodology and first data release

Baes,

Gebek,

Trčka

et al. 2024

A&A

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Galaxy morphology is a powerful diagnostic to assess the realism of cosmological hydrodynamical simulations. Determining the morphology of simulated galaxies requires the generation of synthetic images through 3D radiative transfer post-processing that properly accounts for different stellar populations and interstellar dust attenuation. We use the SKIRT code to generate the TNG50-SKIRT Atlas, a synthetic UV to near-infrared broadband image atlas for a complete stellar-mass selected sample of 1154 galaxies extracted from the TNG50 cosmological simulation at $z=0$. The images have a high spatial resolution (100 pc) and a wide field of view (160 kpc). In addition to the dust-obscured images, we also release dust-free images and physical parameter property maps with matching characteristics. As a sanity check and preview application we discuss the UVJ diagram of the galaxy sample. We investigate the effect of dust attenuation on the UVJ diagram and find that it affects both the star-forming and the quiescent galaxy populations. The quiescent galaxy region is polluted by younger and star-forming highly inclined galaxies, while dust attenuation induces a separation in inclination of the star-forming galaxy population, with low-inclination galaxies remaining at the blue side of the diagram and high-inclination galaxies systematically moving towards the red side. This image atlas can be used for a variety of other applications, including galaxy morphology studies and the investigation of local scaling relations. We publicly release the images and parameter maps, and we invite the community to use them.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The TNG50-SKIRT Atlas: Post-processing methodology and first data release

Baes,

Gebek,

Trčka

et al. 2024

A&A

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Stellar metallicity from optical and UV spectral indices: Test case for WEAVE-StePS

Ditrani¹,

Longhetti²,

Barbera³

et al. 2023

A&A

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Context. The upcoming generation of optical spectrographs on four meter-class telescopes, with their huge multiplexing capabilities, excellent spectral resolution, and unprecedented wavelength coverage, will provide high-quality spectra for thousands of galaxies. These data will allow us to examine of the stellar population properties at intermediate redshift, an epoch that remains unexplored by large and deep surveys. Aims. We assess our capability to retrieve the mean stellar metallicity in galaxies at different redshifts and signal-to-noise ratios (S/N), while simultaneously exploiting the ultraviolet (UV) and optical rest-frame wavelength coverage. Methods. The work is based on a comprehensive library of spectral templates of stellar populations, covering a wide range of age and metallicity values and built assuming various star formation histories, to cover an observable parameter space with diverse chemical enrichment histories and dust attenuation. We took into account possible observational errors, simulating realistic observations of a large sample of galaxies carried out with WEAVE at the William Herschel Telescope at different redshifts and S/N values. We measured all the available and reliable indices on the simulated spectra and on the comparison library. We then adopted a Bayesian approach to compare the two sets of measurements in order to obtain the probability distribution of stellar metallicity with an accurate estimate of the uncertainties. Results. The analysis of the spectral indices has shown how some mid-UV indices, such as BL3580 and Fe3619, can provide reliable constraints on stellar metallicity, along with optical indicators. The analysis of the mock observations has shown that even at S/N = 10, the metallicity can be derived within 0.3 dex, in particular, for stellar populations older than 2 Gyr. The S/N value plays a crucial role in the uncertainty of the estimated metallicity and so, the differences between S/N = 10 and S/N = 30 are quite large, with uncertainties of ~0.15 dex in the latter case. On the contrary, moving from S/N = 30 to S/N = 50, the improvement on the uncertainty of the metallicity measurements is almost negligible. Our results are in good agreement with other theoretical and observational works in the literature and show how the UV indicators, coupled with classic optical ones, can be advantageous in constraining metallicities. Conclusions. We demonstrate that a good accuracy can be reached on the spectroscopic measurements of the stellar metallicity of galaxies at intermediate redshift, even at low S/N, when a large number of indices can be employed, including some UV indices. This is very promising for the upcoming surveys carried out with new, highly multiplexed, large-field spectrographs, such as StePS at the WEAVE and 4MOST, which will provide spectra of thousands of galaxies covering large spectral ranges (between 3600 and 9000 Å in the observed frame) at relatively high S/N (>10 Å−1).

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The wide-field, multiplexed, spectroscopic facility WEAVE: Survey design, overview, and simulated implementation

Jin

Trager

Dalton

et al. 2023

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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WEAVE, the new wide-field, massively multiplexed spectroscopic survey facility for the William Herschel Telescope, will see first light in late 2022. WEAVE comprises a new 2-degree field-of-view prime-focus corrector system, a nearly 1000-multiplex fibre positioner, 20 individually deployable ‘mini’ integral field units (IFUs), and a single large IFU. These fibre systems feed a dual-beam spectrograph covering the wavelength range 366−959 nm at R ∼ 5000, or two shorter ranges at R ∼ 20 000. After summarising the design and implementation of WEAVE and its data systems, we present the organisation, science drivers and design of a five- to seven-year programme of eight individual surveys to: (i) study our Galaxy’s origins by completing Gaia’s phase-space information, providing metallicities to its limiting magnitude for ∼3 million stars and detailed abundances for ∼1.5 million brighter field and open-cluster stars; (ii) survey ∼0.4 million Galactic-plane OBA stars, young stellar objects and nearby gas to understand the evolution of young stars and their environments; (iii) perform an extensive spectral survey of white dwarfs; (iv) survey ∼400 neutral-hydrogen-selected galaxies with the IFUs; (v) study properties and kinematics of stellar populations and ionised gas in z < 0.5 cluster galaxies; (vi) survey stellar populations and kinematics in ∼25 000 field galaxies at 0.3 ≲ z ≲ 0.7; (vii) study the cosmic evolution of accretion and star formation using >1 million spectra of LOFAR-selected radio sources; (viii) trace structures using intergalactic/circumgalactic gas at z > 2. Finally, we describe the WEAVE Operational Rehearsals using the WEAVE Simulator.

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WEAVE-StePS: A stellar population survey using WEAVE at WHT

Cited by 4 publications

References 142 publications

The TNG50-SKIRT Atlas: Post-processing methodology and first data release

The TNG50-SKIRT Atlas: Post-processing methodology and first data release

Stellar metallicity from optical and UV spectral indices: Test case for WEAVE-StePS

The wide-field, multiplexed, spectroscopic facility WEAVE: Survey design, overview, and simulated implementation

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