Page History
Table of Contents
Background
The concept of Multi-cycle Cycle Treasury (MCT) programs was developed as a mechanism to allow the HST Hubble Space Telescope community to address high-impact science questions that require observations on a scale that cannot be included within supported by the standard time allocation process. MCT programs were defined as GO programs that required at least 450 orbits. There was no restriction or pre-selection of science topics. Up to 500 GO orbits together with 250 orbits of Director's Discretionary time were made available for these prorgams programs in each of cycle Cycles 17, 18 and 19. Following Following the highly-successful Servicing Mission 4, the Call for MCT proposals was issued in August 2009. A total of 39 proposals were received and reviewed by a dedicated Telescope Allocation Committee that met in January 2010. Based on the TAC recommendations, the STScI Director, Matt Mountain, approved three programs:
- CANDELS: Cosmic Assembly Near-IR Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey
- PI: S. Faber (UCSC) co-PI: H. Ferguson (STScI)
- WFC3 and ACS imaging of multiple fields to probe galaxy assembly, coupled with a high-redshift supernova survey. 902 orbits.
- Through
- “A Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Survey: UV/optical/near-IR imaging of one quadrant of M31, PHAT, (PI J. Dalcanton, U. Washington) 834 orbits.
- “Through a Lens, Darkly—New Constraints on the Fundamental Components of the Cosmos.” a multicolor
- PI: M. Postman (STScI)
- A multicolor (14-band) imaging survey of 25 galaxy clusters, coupled with a high-redshift supernova
- search in coordinated parallel observations, CLASH
- .
- 524 orbits.
- A Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Survey
- PI J. Dalcanton (U. Washington)
- UV/optical/near-IR imaging of one quadrant of M31, PHAT. 834 orbits.
Short descriptions of each program are given below. For further details on the selection process, see this STScI Newsletter article. The observations for all programs were complete by late 2013 and the October 2013 Space Telescope User Committee meeting Committee meeting includes status reports form from all three projects.
CANDELS: Cosmic Assembly Near-IR Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey
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A more extensive description of the program and some of the early science results can be found in this Newsletter article.
CLASH: Cluster Lensing and Supernova survey with Hubble
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As the most massive objects in the universe, galaxy clusters represent important signposts in our story of structure evolution, and are the ultimate telescopic lenses, placing gravitationally lensed galaxies from the earliest epochs in comfortable reach for careful study. We take full advantage of the refurbished ACS and WFC3 cameras to deliver deep 14-filter images of 25 carefully chosen clusters. These will enable us to address timely and substantive questions about dark matter, dark energy, and galaxy evolution well beyond z=7. These X-ray clusters are chosen to be free of lensing bias and to span a wide range of redshift and mass. By combining strong and weak lensing, we will obtain the definitive mass profile of relaxed clusters to confront the distinctive prediction of the standard LambdaCDM Lambda-CDM model. Detailed maps of internal structure will be enabled by ~1, 000 new multiply-imaged lensed sources to AB=26, all with precise (2% x (1+z)) photometric redshift measurements, thanks to WFC3's UV and IR coverage. A supernovae search in parallel (with low magnification uncertainties) will extend the Hubble diagram of SN1a to z>1.5, testing the constancy of dark energy with time and probing progenitorevolutionprogenitor evolution. Our homogeneous panchromatic deep imaging of this cluster sample will constitute a vast legacy archive for studies of the formation and evolution of structure.
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A more extensive description of the program and some of the early science results can be found in this Newsletter article.
PHAT: Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Treasury
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