The Grism Lens-Amplified Survey from Space (GLASS): Dissecting reionization, z~2 galaxies, and dense environments

The Grism Lens-Amplified Survey from Space (GLASS) is a large HST cycle-21 program targeting 10 massive galaxy clusters with extensive HST imaging from CLASH and the Frontier Field Initiative. The program consists of 140 primary and 140 parallel orbits of near-infrared WCF3 and optical ACS grism observations, which result in spatially resolved spectroscopy of thousands of galaxies. GLASS has three primary science drivers although a wide variety of other science investigations are possible with the public GLASS data (e.g. SN 'Refsdal'). The key science goals of GLASS are to: 1) shed light on the epoch of reionization, by measuring the lyman alpha optical depth at z>6; 2) Study gas accretion, star formation, and outflows by spatially mapping resolved star formation and determine metallicity gradients from emission lines of galaxies at 1.3<z<2.3. 3) Explore the environmental dependence of galaxy evolution using the first comprehensive census of spatially resolved star formation in dense environments, i.e., the cluster cores as well as the cluster infall regions. I will present the first results from GLASS.

Speaker: Tommaso True, UC Los Angeles