• DOI:10.3847/1538-4357/ab412b
• Corpus ID: 119041205

RELICS: Reionization Lensing Cluster Survey

@article{Coe2019RELICSRL,
  title={RELICS: Reionization Lensing Cluster Survey},
  author={Dan Coe and Brett Salmon and Maru{\vs}a Brada{\vc} and Larry D. Bradley and Keren Sharon and Adi Zitrin and Ana Acebr{\'o}n and Catherine Cerny and Nath'alia Cibirka and Victoria Strait and Rachel Paterno-Mahler and Guillaume Mahler and Roberto J. Avila and Sara Ogaz and Kuang-Han Huang and Debora Pelliccia and Daniel P. Stark and Ramesh Mainali and Pascal A. Oesch and Michele Trenti and Daniela Carrasco and William A. Dawson and Steven A. Rodney and L. G. Strolger and Adam G. Riess and Christine Jones and Brenda L. Frye and Nicole G. Czakon and Keiichi Umetsu and Benedetta Vulcani and Or Graur and Saurabh W. Jha and Melissa. L. Graham and Alberto Molino and Mario Nonino and Jens Hjorth and Jonatan Selsing and Lise Christensen and Shotaro Kikuchihara and Masami Ouchi and Masamune Oguri and Brian Welch and Brian C. Lemaux and Felipe Andrade-Santos and Austin T. Hoag and Traci L. Johnson and Avery Peterson and Matthew Past and Carter Fox and Irene Agulli and Rachael C. Livermore and Russell E. Ryan and Daniel Lam and Irene Sendra-Server and Sune Toft and Lorenzo Lovisari and Yuanyuan Su},
  journal={The Astrophysical Journal},
  year={2019},
  volume={884}
}

• D. Coe, B. Salmon, +54 authors Yuanyuan Su
• Published 5 March 2019
• Physics, Geology
• The Astrophysical Journal

Large surveys of galaxy clusters with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and Spitzer, including the Cluster Lensing And Supernova survey with Hubble and the Frontier Fields, have demonstrated the power of strong gravitational lensing to efficiently deliver large samples of high-redshift galaxies. We extend this strategy through a wider, shallower survey named RELICS, the Reionization Lensing Cluster Survey, described here. Our 188-orbit Hubble Treasury Program observed 41 clusters at 0.182 ≤ z ≤ 0.972 with Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) and WFC3/IR imaging spanning 0.4–1.7 μm. We selected 21 of the most massive clusters known based on Planck PSZ2 estimates and 20 additional clusters based on observed or inferred lensing strength. RELICS observed 46 WFC3/IR pointings (∼200 arcmin2) each with two orbits divided among four filters (F105W, F125W, F140W, and F160W) and ACS imaging as needed to achieve single-orbit depth in each of three filters (F435W, F606W, and F814W). As previously reported by Salmon et al., we discovered over 300 z ∼ 6–10 candidates, including the brightest z ∼ 6 candidates known, and the most distant spatially resolved lensed arc known at z ∼ 10. Spitzer IRAC imaging (945 hr awarded, plus 100 archival, spanning 3.0–5.0 μm) has crucially enabled us to distinguish z ∼ 10 candidates from z ∼ 2 interlopers. For each cluster, two HST observing epochs were staggered by about a month, enabling us to discover 11 supernovae, including 3 lensed supernovae, which we followed up with 20 orbits from our program. Reduced HST images, catalogs, and lens models are available on MAST, and reduced Spitzer images are available on IRSA.