Team Blanton

AS2 (your logo here)

• SDSS-III and BOSS

We are involved in the planning for a new large survey using the SDSS 2.5m telescope, slated to start observing in Fall 2008, which will create the largest volume map of the Universe to date, create the largest samples of Galactic stellar spectra in the optical and the infrared, and search thousands of stars for the presence of planets. Our group's focus is on understanding the large scale structure of the Universe and the evolution of galaxies over time. Other parts of SDSS-III (previously known as AS2) are APOGEE, which is obtaining 150,000 near-infrared spectra of Galactic stars at R=20,000 resolution, SEGUE-2, which is obtaining a similar number of optical stellar spectra, and MARVELS, which is monitoring thousands of stars' radial velocities in search of planets.

• Dwarf galaxy dynamics

With collaborators Marla Geha and Andrew West, we are studying the population of dwarf galaxies (in this case, galaxies a few thousandths the size of the Milky Way). We have optical rotation curves from the Magellan and KPNO 4m telescopes, as well as 21cm spectra from the Green Bank Telescope and Arecibo.

• PRIMUS

Using the IMACS instrument on the 6.5m Baade telescope at Magellan, with collaborators Daniel Eisenstein, Alison Coil, Richard Cool, Scott Burles, and others, we are creating one of the largest samples of galaxies at high redshift (up to redshift unity) by using a low-dispersion prism plus a mask.

• SDSS

We have helped build the infrastructure for the operation and analysis of the SDSS and SDSS-II, together comprising the most ambitious astronomical project in history. Our role was in developing the spectroscopic observing strategy (the tiling algorithm), in tracking the survey window function and producing catalogs for science analysis (the NYU-VAGC), and in simulations of SDSS photometry.

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Members

• Michael Blanton
  • Blanton's Curriculum Vitae [ps] [pdf]
  • Blanton's Ph.D. Thesis
• Dimitri Apostol
• Christina Ignarra
• Eyal Kazin
• John Moustakas
• Guangtun Zhu