The Hector Galaxy Survey will observe 15,000 galaxies during its lifetime. Targets have been selected from the Wide Area Vista Extragalactic Survey (WAVES) fields in the Northern and Southern hemispheres, as well as 11 rich galaxy clusters.
In the WAVES-South region, the first year of the survey will concentrate on three 5×12 degree fields named G23, H01 and H03. In the WAVES-North region, we will concentrate on the SAMI fields G12 and G15, expanding outwards in 1 degree strips of declination.
The galaxy fields for the first year of survey operations are shown below.
| Field | RA (degrees) | DEC (degrees) | Type | % Observed |
| A0151 | 17.10920 | -15.40920 | Cluster | 0 |
| A3158 | 55.77040 | -53.65310 | Cluster | 0 |
| A3266 | 67.77460 | -61.44360 | Cluster | 0 |
| A3376 | 90.15290 | -40.03260 | Cluster | 78 |
| A3391 | 96.58590 | -53.69330 | Cluster | 10 |
| A3395 | 96.88000 | -54.43740 | Cluster | 10 |
| A3667 | 303.09170 | -56.81520 | Cluster | 88 |
| A3716 | 312.8600 | -52.70700 | Cluster | 75 |
| A2399 | 329.37260 | -7.796920 | Cluster | 82 |
| A0119 | 14.067150 | -1.255370 | Cluster | 26 |
| A0085 | 10.460211 | -9.303184 | Cluster | 60 |
| G12 | 180 | 0 | WAVES-North | 29 |
| G15 | 225 | 0 | WAVES-North | 33 |
| G23 | 345 | -32.5 | WAVES-South | 24 |
| H01 | 15 | -30 | WAVES-South | 34 |
| H03 | 45 | -30 | WAVES-South | 53 |
Hector Input Catalogue 2024
Attached below is the Hector Input catalogue of galaxies which will be observed during the survey. This catalogue is incomplete, and will be expanded when further redshifts are available.
Note that this catalogue misses 165 observed galaxies due to the seeding not working properly to generate the input catalogue and updates of the source catalogues. RS_member and ClusterMember columns are also wrong. See the catalogue below for unique observed galaxies for properties – a new version of the Hector Input Catalogue will be released in Feb 2025.
The Database (including Hector Input Catalogue, Star catalogues, Tile lists etc) is uploaded online on the Data Central ObsLog tool: https://obslog.datacentral.org.au/?/?
User Manual for Data Central ObsLog tool: https://hector.survey.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/HectorObsLogtool.pdf
Summary of Galaxy Statistics for Early Science
| Target galaxies | 5873 |
| Observed galaxies (incl. commissioning, repeats,wrong IDs) | 3078 |
| Unique Observed galaxies | 1913 |
| Unique Observed galaxies – Clusters | 934 |
| Unique Observed galaxies – WAVES North | 400 |
| Unique Observed galaxies – WAVES South | 579 |
| Unique Milky Way analogues | 136 |
| Unique Edge-on wind candidates | 94 |
| Unique Dwarf galaxies | 718 |
Catalogue of unique observed galaxies (1913) with properties:
Documentation
Hector Observation Pipeline: https://github.com/SteBarsanti/Hector-Observations-Pipeline/tree/master
– Suggestions of updating tiling code (suggested by MP)
Document on how Target Selection/Tiling is done: https://github.com/samvaughan/hector-input-catalogues/blob/main/Hector_Target_Selection_Summary.pdf
*Description of Input Catalogue: http://samvaughan.info/hector-input-catalogues/
*Description of Database: https://samvaughan.info/hector-database/
*Description of Tiling: https://samvaughan.info/hector-tiling/
*Description of Observing Pipeline: https://samvaughan.info/hector-observing/
*Making Tiles: https://samvaughan.info/hector-observing/Making_A_Hector_Tile/
– Useful examples for tiling (provided by MP, thanks to all observers in 2024B Run1 + Oguzhan)
*on samvaughan.info use the menu bar on top left to navigate through the pages.
Minutes from meetings:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/158Hao0ONycCmDtA9XmiukkWDnBjPPBV1ngeFqjJ9onM/edit?tab=t.0
Slides presented at 13/12/2024 meeting:
Tasks
- SAMI tiles with broad variety of targets (DONE: Stefania – Two Abell85 SAMI tiles – built only-SAMI cluster input catalogue in Hector language for easy tiling if needed again)
- Tom’s modifications to hexabundle plot (DONE: Stefania)
- Find G23 segmentation maps (IN PROGRESS: Stefania & Sabine – WAVES database has been transferred to different cloud)
- Understand how uberID for WAVES are estimated and any update on their catalogue (Stefania)
- Completeness checks (IN PROGRESS: Stefania & Ellen)
- Summary of galaxy statistics (DONE: Stefania)
- Seeding (DONE: Stefania – at Nov 2024 it is accurately reproducing the same sub-selected galaxies. This might change when we add new redshifts – but we should save the un-sampled catalogues – i.e. with the stepped selection function but without the sparse sampling – as “source-of-truth”)
- 165 observed galaxies are NOT in the input catalogue – 146 are NOT in the source catalogues (IN PROGRESS: Stefania – manually add 165-146=19 to the master catalogue)
- Update Input Catalogues with new priorities for cluster galaxies: 8=all blue galaxies, 7=red & R>R200, 6= red & R<R200, 5=foreground low mass dwarfs, MW analogues, edge-on wind candidates, 4=all foreground galaxies (DONE: Stefania)
- Remove double stars (DONE: Stefania & Mina):
- A0085_T025 G3 (ID G97410100903660896)
- A3667_T061 Standard star (ID: S481597891)
- H03_T078 G2 (ID: G10819345)
- Run Full Tiling for 2024 (DONE: Stefania)
- Fixed bug in Tiling pipeline due to “CC” and “”WW” ids treated as unique different galaxies. Affected fields are A3667, A3716, A3376, H01, G23, H03. (DONE: Stefania)
- Found issues in the A85 and A119 tiles – wrong values in columns and multiple different ids with same RA/Dec – it looks like an old and wrong version of the clusters catalogue has been used -maybe the members and members+foreground galaxies together from which come most of the duplicates (DONE: Stefania)
- Make sure each tile has a unique name. This has caused a lot of issues for observers and DR team. Modify “tiling” pipeline to start from the subsequent highest number of observed/configured tiles, add checks in “making a tile” pipeline (DONE: Stefania)
- Implement colour cuts to improve 2dF efficiency in the Hector regions as we were doing in clusters.
- New H0 region to be open in 2025. (Stefania)
- Simulate impact of changing standard star mag limits to brighter, e.g. g <17, for better calibration accuracy. (Stefania)
- Remove the known secondary standard that has another star in the same bundle radius, and check how many other standard stars have another star within a bundle radius. If too many it will limit tiling, but if only a few and they are not the only star in their sky area, then they should be removed.
- Observed galaxies catalogue from database/input catalogue (DONE: Stefania)
- Add file with column descriptions for the observed galaxies catalogue from database/input catalogue (Stefania)
- Release Hector Input Catalogue (Stefania)
- Check observed galaxies in 2024 from tiles (Done: MP)
- Observing strategy for 2025 – might have overheads due to scheduling – might open new WAVES North region. SAMI_MANGA tile is a priority. (Stefania)
- Check exclusion of targets for clusters due to nearby stars. Compare with parent catalogue. (Stefania)
- Check tiles from Oct 2022 have correct information for DR team (Stefania)