LEGA-C
Publications by the LEGA-C collaboration LEGA-C (Large Early Galaxy Astrophysics Census) is a project centered at an ESO Public Spectroscopic Survey and funded by an ERC Consolidator Grant. The spectroscopic survey, one of the largest time allocations ever on the VLT, has produced deep, high-resolution optical spectra of several thousand galaxies in the redshift range z=0.6-1 with the aim of detecting with high fidelity the stellar continuum light. This enables us to characterize the stellar content and stellar kinematics, providing an entirely new physical description of the galaxy population 7 Gyr ago, with which we will finally be able solve long-standing questions in galaxy formation that were out of reach before: what is the star-formation history of individual galaxies, why and how is star-formation ``quenched'' in many galaxies, and to what extent do galaxies grow subsequently through merging afterward? The image below collates thousands of galaxy spectra sorted by their stellar population age (using Balmer absorption as a proxy), from young in blue to old in red.
CANDELS/3D-HST
My First-Author Publications on CANDELS/3D-HST
CANDELS (PIs: S. Faber and H. Ferguson) is the largest-ever HST observing program. It provided optical and near-IR images of 5 well-studied cosmological blank fields with the aim to characterize the galaxy population at redshifts larger than z=4 and determine the structural and morphological properties of galaxies up to redshift z=3. 3D-HST (PI P. van Dokkum) is the largest-ever spectroscopic survey carried out with HST. The slitless mode results in simultaneous optical and near-IR spectra for all objects in the field of view, greatly reducing redshift uncertainties and providing direct access to the commonly used spectroscopic diagnostics. My contributions to these projects include a couple of unexpected discoveries (the most distant Einstein-ring gravitational galaxy-galaxy lens and a host of star-bursting dwarf galaxies) and the measurement and interpretation of the basic structural properties of galaxies from z=3 to the present day.
