Abstract
One of the key goals of NASA’s astrophysics program is to answer the question: How did galaxies evolve into the spirals and elliptical galaxies that we see today? We describe a space mission concept called Galaxy Evolution Spectroscopic Explorer (GESE) to address this question by making a large spectroscopic survey of galaxies at a redshift, z∼1 (look-back time of ∼8 billion years). GESE is a 1.5-m space telescope with an ultraviolet (UV) multi-object slit spectrograph that can obtain spectra of hundreds of galaxies per exposure. The spectrograph covers the spectral range, 0.2–0.4 μm at a spectral resolving power, R∼500. This observed spectral range corresponds to 0.1–0.2 μm as emitted by a galaxy at a redshift, z=1. The mission concept takes advantage of two new technological advances: (1) light-weighted, wide-field telescope mirrors, and (2) the Next-Generation MicroShutter Array (NG-MSA) to be used as a slit generator in the multi-object slit spectrograph.
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Heap, S.R., Gong, Q., Hull, T. et al. GESE: a small UV space telescope to conduct a large spectroscopic survey of z∼1 Galaxies. Astrophys Space Sci 354, 211–214 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10509-014-1981-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10509-014-1981-0