B. N. Hilbert

The Frontier Fields: Survey Design

The Frontier Fields are a directors discretionary time campaign with HST and the Spitzer Space Telescope to see deeper into the universe than ever before. The Frontier Fields combine the power of HST and Spitzer with the natural gravitational telescopes of massive high-magnification clusters of galaxies to produce the deepest observations of clusters and their lensed galaxies ever obtained. Six clusters - Abell 2744, MACSJ0416.1-2403, MACSJ0717.5+3745, MACSJ1149.5+2223, Abell S1063, and Abell 370 - were selected based on their lensing strength, sky darkness, Galactic extinction, parallel field suitability, accessibility to ground-based facilities, HST, Spitzer and JWST observability, and pre-existing ancillary data. These clusters have been targeted by the HST ACS/WFC and WFC3/IR with coordinated parallels of adjacent blank fields for over 840 HST orbits. The Spitzer Space Telescope has dedicated > 1000 hours of directors discretionary time to obtain IRAC 3.6 and 4.5 micron imaging to ~26.5, 26.0 ABmag 5-sigma point-source depths in the six cluster and six parallel Frontier Fields. The Frontier Field parallel fields are the second-deepest observations thus far by HST with ~29th ABmag 5-sigma point source depths in seven optical - near-infrared bandpasses. Galaxies behind the Frontier Field cluster lenses experience typical magnification factors of a few, with small regions near the critical curves magnified by factors 10-100. Therefore, the Frontier Field cluster HST images achieve intrinsic depths of ~30-33 magnitudes over very small volumes. Early studies of the Frontier Fields have probed galaxies fainter than any seen before during the epoch of reionization 6 < z < 10, mapped out the cluster dark matter to unprecedented resolution, and followed lensed transient events.

The Frontier Fields: Survey Design and Initial Results

What are the faintest distant galaxies we can see with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) now, before the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope? This is the challenge taken up by the Frontier Fields, a Directors discretionary time campaign with HST and the Spitzer Space Telescope to see deeper into the universe than ever before. The Frontier Fields combines the power of HST and Spitzer with the natural gravitational telescopes of massive high-magnification clusters of galaxies to produce the deepest observations of clusters and their lensed galaxies ever obtained. Six clusters—Abell 2744, MACSJ0416.1-2403, MACSJ0717.5+3745, MACSJ1149.5+2223, Abell S1063, and Abell 370—have been targeted by the HST ACS/WFC and WFC3/IR cameras with coordinated parallel fields for over 840 HST orbits. The parallel fields are the second-deepest observations thus far by HST with 5σ point-source depths of ~29th ABmag. Galaxies behind the clusters experience typical magnification factors of a few, with small regions magnified by factors of 10–100. Therefore, the Frontier Field cluster HST images achieve intrinsic depths of ~30–33 mag over very small volumes. Spitzer has obtained over 1000 hr of Directors discretionary imaging of the Frontier Field cluster and parallels in IRAC 3.6 and 4.5 μm bands to 5σ point-source depths of ~26.5, 26.0 ABmag. We demonstrate the exceptional sensitivity of the HST Frontier Field images to faint high-redshift galaxies, and review the initial results related to the primary science goals.

The Wide-Field Camera 3 detectors

The Wide-field Camera 3 (WFC3) is a fourth-generation instrument planned for installation in Hubble Space Telescope (HST). Designed as a panchromatic camera, WFC3s UVIS and IR channels will complement the other instruments onboard HST and enhance the observatorys scientific performance. UVIS images are obtained via two 4096×2051 pixel e2v CCDs while the IR images are taken with a 1024×1024 pixel HgCdTe focal plane array from Teledyne Imaging Sensors. Based upon characterization tests performed at NASA/GSFC, the final flight detectors have been chosen and installed in the instrument. This paper summarizes the performance characteristics of the WFC3 flight detectors based upon component and instrument-level testing in ambient and thermal vacuum environments.

A DEEPER LOOK AT FAINT Hα EMISSION IN NEARBY DWARF GALAXIES

We present deep H

The puzzling case of the radio-loud QSO 3C 186: a gravitational wave recoiling black hole in a young radio source?

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The infrared detectors for the wide field camera 3 on HST

imaging of three nearby dwarf galaxies, carefully selected to optimize observations with the Maryland-Magellan Tunable Filter (MMTF) on the Magellan 6.5m telescope. An effective bandpass of

Persistence and count-rate nonlinearity in the HST WFC3 IR detector

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Selection of the infrared detectors for Wide Field Camera 3 on the Hubble Space Telescope

13\AA\ is used, and the images reach 3

Wide-field camera 3 ground testing and calibration

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Making good use of JWST's coronagraphs: tools and strategies from a user's perspective

flux limits of