Bibcode
Vieira, Joaquin; Bock, Jamie; Bridge, Carrie; Conley, Alex; Cooray, Asantha; Clements, Dave; Dowell, Darren; Wardlow, Julie; Pérez-Fournon, I.; Oliver, Seb; Riechers, Dominik; Viero, Marco
Bibliographical reference
Spitzer Proposal ID #80240
Advertised on:
1
2012
Citations
0
Refereed citations
0
Description
HerMES, the Herschel/SPIRE extragalactic GTO program, is detecting high
redshift sources which were once the domain of high redshift QSOs. Our
most spectacular object discovered to date, from over 50 square degrees
of survey area with rich ancillary data, is an extraordinarily bright
submillimeter galaxy with a confirmed redshift of z=6.337, which we call
First Look Survey #3 (FLS3). This source is at a redshift close to the
epoch of reionization, and it is most likely a signpost of the extreme
evolution which fueled the transition from a neutral universe (the dark
ages) to a completely ionized universe which we live in today. The epoch
of reionization is the new frontier in structure formation, and the
ability to select massive star formation-dominated galaxies in this era
will lead to great advances in our understanding of the end of the dark
ages. We have already measured the FIR luminosity, dust mass, dust
temperature, rest-frame UV continuum, CO, H2O, and C+ line luminosities
for FLS3. The last remaining physical characteristic to measure in order
to understand the source is its stellar mass. Here we propose for two
hour-long integrations of this source with IRAC CH1 and CH2 to robustly
detect the source, measure its stellar mass, and constrain the UV
extinction. These observations will enable us to determine stellar,
dust, and gas mass ratios, and specific star formation rate. This single
source will have major implications for our understanding of galaxy
formation, the epoch of reionization, and the cosmic infrared
background. These near infrared observations cannot be made with any
other instrument. The high redshift value for this source was confirmed
only after the last Spitzer call for proposals, and due to the overall
uncertainty in the future Spitzer cycles and the paper reporting the
discovery of this source now under preparation for publication in a
high-profile journal, we request a rapid DDT observation.