During the last 13 years, I have been working on several astronomical surveys (listed below). My main contribution to all these projects has been related to the estimation of accurate multi-band photometry and photometric redshifts for as much near as distant galaxies. In the last few years, I got more interested in new analytical tools such as Machine and Deep Learning applied to large astronomical databases. Here I describe the project I was envolved and the scientific publications I lead in each one of them:

 

  • ALHAMBRA: Advance Large Homogeneous Medium Band       Astronomical survey.

    alhambra

 

The Advance Large Homogeneous Medium Band Astronomical (ALHAMBRA; Moles et al. 2008) survey has observed eight different regions of the sky, including sections of the Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS), DEEP2, European Large-Area Infrared Space Observatory Survey (ELAIS), Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey North (GOODS-N), Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and Groth fields using a new photometric system with 20 optical, contiguous ∼300-Å filters plus the JHKs bands. The filter system is designed to optimize the effective photometric redshift depth of the survey, while having enough wavelength resolution for the identification of faint emission lines. The observations, carried out with the Calar Alto 3.5-m telescope using the wide-field optical camera Large Area Imager for Calar Alto (LAICA) and the near-infrared (NIR) instrument Omega-2000, represent a total of ∼700 h of on-target science images. The catalogues presented in Molino et al. 2014 are complete down to a magnitude I ∼ 24.5 AB and cover an effective area of 2.79 deg2. The ALHAMBRA Photometric Redshift estimates reach a precision of δz/(1 + zs) = 1% for I<22.5 and δz/(1+zs)=1.4% for 22.5<I<24.5. The global n(z) distribution shows a mean redshift ⟨z⟩ = 0.56 for I < 22.5 AB and ⟨z⟩ = 0.86 for I < 24.5 AB. Given its depth and small cosmic variance, ALHAMBRA is a unique data set for galaxy evolution studies.

  • CLASH: Cluster Lensing and Supernovae with Hubble.

clash

The Cluster Lensing And Supernovae survey with Hubble (CLASH; Postman et al. 2012) is a Multi- Cycle Treasury program awarded with 524 HST orbits to image the cores of25 massive galaxy clusters at interme- diate redshifts (0.1<z<0.9). The cluster selection includes 20 X-ray selected dynamically-relaxed systems plus 5 additional specifically-selected strong lensing clusters. CLASH has combined the high spatial-resolution imaging from Hubble Space Telescope (HST) with a 16-band filter system optimized for photometric redshift estimations (4 WFC3/UVIS + 5 WFC3/IR + 7 ACS/WFC) and a typical photometric depth of 20 orbits per cluster. The combination of these three elements has made the CLASH survey an unprecedented legacy dataset. The photometric redshift catalogues, derived with such unique dataset, reach an accuracy of dz/(1+z) ∼ 0.8%, 1.0%, and 2.0%for galaxies with I-band F814W AB magnitudes < 18, 20, and 23, respectively (Molino et al. 2017). These catalogues were published at the NASA/MAST archive.

  • J-PAS: Javalambre Physics of the Accelerated Universe Astronomical Survey.

jpas

Javalambre Physics of the Accelerating Universe Astrophysical Survey, (J-PAS; Benítez et al. 2014), is an unprecedented photometric sky survey of 8500 deg2 visible from Javalambre in 59 colors, using a set of broad, intermediate and narrow band filters. J-PAS will discover an unprecedented number of stars, galaxies, supernovas, quasars and solar system objects, which will be mapped with exquisite accuracy. The innovative designs of the J-PAS camera and filter system will allow, for the first time, to map not only the positions of hundreds of millions of galaxies in the sky, but their individual distances to us as well, providing the first complete 3D map of the Universe.

  • S-PLUS: Southern Photometric Local Universe Survey.

SPLUS2

The Southern Photometric Local Universe Survey (S-PLUS; Mendes de Oliveira et al. in prep.) is a new project that will observe 8000 deg2 of the Southern Sky in a unique set of twelve optical bands. The filter system is composed of the 5 SDSS broad-band (BB) filters, supplemented by 7 narrow-band (NB) filters covering the main stellar features from 3700 to 9000\AA. S-PLUS is carried out using a fully robotic 0.8m telescope on Cerro Tololo. The camera has a 9kx9k E2V detector with a plate scale of 0.55\arcsec per pixel and a field of view of 2 deg2. The NB filters cover prominent features in nearby galaxies (i.e., OII, Ca H+K, D4000, H$\delta$, Mg$b$, H$\alpha$ and CaT), offering strong constraints on star formation histories as well as photometric redshifts of galaxies. They are furthermore highly suitable for searching for low-metallicity and carbon-enhanced stars, the blue horizontal branch and variable stars, and for mapping the Galactic plane.

 

  • J-PLUS: Javalambre Photometric Local Universe Survey.

jplus

The Javalambre-Photometric Local Universe Survey, J-PLUS, is an unprecedented photometric sky survey of 8500 deg2 visible from Javalambre, using a set of 12 broad, intermediate and narrow band filters. J-PLUS will be a powerful 3D view of the nearby Universe that will observe and characterize tens of millions of galaxies and stars of the Milky Way halo, with a wide range of Astrophysical applications.

As demonstrated in Molino et al. 2017b (accepted in A&A), for the case of the nearby double  galaxy cluster Abell-2589 (z=0.041) & Abell-2593 (z=0.044), this new filter system is capable to provide as accurate photometric redshifts as dz/1+z = 1.0% for cluster galaxies with iSDSS<18 AB magnitudes.

 

My (last) Scientific talks: