The Frontier Fields: Survey Design and Initial Results

By J. Lotz, A. Koekemoer, D. Coe, Norman Grogin, P. Capak, J. Mack, Jay Anderson, R. Avila, E. Barker, D. Borncamp and 32 more. 2016

469 citations recorded by the source corpus.

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 Director’s 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 Director’s 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.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d0003a70d35eba0051f70bd3ecd0e8f549b21eb4

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Citations in the corpus

Galaxy Protoclusters as Drivers of Cosmic Star Formation History in the First 2 Gyr (2017, background): “Deep galaxy surveys that sample a representative volume of the high-redshift Universe (e.g., CANDELS: Grogin et al. (2011), CLASH: Molino et al. (2017), and the Frontier Fields: Lotz et al. (2017)) are probing relatively biased objects with massive z = 0 descendants.”
A JWST/NIRSpec First Census of Broad-line AGNs at z = 4–7: Detection of 10 Faint AGNs with M BH ∼ 106–108 M ⊙ and Their Host Galaxy Properties (2023, background): “…HST/ACS and WCS3 images were taken in the F435W, F606W, F814W, F105W, F125W, F140W, and F160W-bands in the Hubble Frontier Field program (PI: J. Lotz; Lotz et al. 2017) and the Beyond Ultra-deep Frontier Fields And Legacy Observations (BUFFALO) program (PI: C. Steinhardt; Steinhardt et al. 2020).”
Detection of the Far-infrared [O iii] and Dust Emission in a Galaxy at Redshift 8.312: Early Metal Enrichment in the Heart of the Reionization Era (2018, background): “1−2403 cluster, one of the Hubble Frontier Fields (HFF, Lotz et al. 2017), while the magnification of the LBG is moderate (e.g., magnification factor, μg=1.43±0.04, Kawamata et al. 2016).”
The z ∼ 6 Luminosity Function Fainter than −15 mag from the Hubble Frontier Fields: The Impact of Magnification Uncertainties (2016, methodology): “0 reductions of the deep HST optical and near-IR HST observations available over the first four clusters in the HFF program: Abell 2744, MACS0416, MACS0717, and MACS1149 (A. Koekemoer et al. 2016, in prep; Lotz et al. 2017).”
The Universe Is Reionizing at z ∼ 7: Bayesian Inference of the IGM Neutral Fraction Using Lyα Emission from Galaxies (2017, background): “We draw a realistic sample of LBGs at z ∼ 7 from the Mason et al. (2015) UV luminosity function model (which is consistent with all observations, including new deep data from the Hubble Frontier Fields at z∼> 7 e.g., Atek et al. 2015b; McLeod et al. 2016; Livermore et al. 2017; Bouwens et al. 2017a)”
A Comprehensive Study of Galaxies at z ∼ 9–16 Found in the Early JWST Data: Ultraviolet Luminosity Functions and Cosmic Star Formation History at the Pre-reionization Epoch (2022, background): “Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI. magnification (Lotz et al. 2017; Coe et al. 2019).”
What does the first highly redshifted 21-cm detection tell us about early galaxies? (2018, background): “Such faint objects have thus far only been found in lensing fields, in which their abundance remains controversial (Bouwens et al. 2017a; Livermore, Finkelstein & Lotz 2017).”
The GLASS-JWST Early Release Science Program. I. Survey Design and Release Plans (2022, methodology): “…selected as the GLASS-JWST-ERS primary target for the following reasons: (i) As an HFF cluster, it has exquisite ancillary ultra-deep HST imaging (Lotz et al. 2017), GLASS HST (Treu et al. 2015) and ground-based spectroscopy (Mahler et al. 2018); (ii) Its publicly available lens models at the…”
Inferences on the timeline of reionization at z ∼ 8 from the KMOS Lens-Amplified Spectroscopic Survey (2019, methodology): “A2744, M0416, M1149 and RXJ2248 are all Frontier Fields (hereafter HFF, Lotz et al. 2017).”
CEERS Key Paper. I. An Early Look into the First 500 Myr of Galaxy Formation with JWST (2022, background): “…Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey (CANDELS; Grogin et al. 2011; Koekemoer et al. 2011), the Hubble Frontier Fields (HFF; Lotz et al. 2017), and the Brightest of Reionizing Galaxy survey (Trenti et al. 2011) have uncovered thousands of galaxies at z> 6 (e.g., Bouwens et…”
The Star Formation Main Sequence in the Hubble Space Telescope Frontier Fields (2017, methodology): “The HST Frontier Fields program (Lotz et al. 2017) combined the capabilities of the two photometric cameras ACS and WFC3 onboard HST with the power of gravitational lensing to realize the deepest images ever produced in six different pointings, each targeting one z ∼ 0.3− 0.5 cluster together with…”
The James Webb Space Telescope Mission (2023, background): “…the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey (Giavalisco et al. 2004), the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field (Beckwith et al. 2006), the Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey (CANDELS, Grogin et al. 2011; Koekemoer et al. 2011), the Frontier Fields (Lotz et al. 2017) and many others.”