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 G09, 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 |
| A0151 | 17.10920 | -15.40920 | Cluster |
| A3158 | 55.77040 | -53.65310 | Cluster |
| A3266 | 67.77460 | -61.44360 | Cluster |
| A3376 | 90.15290 | -40.03260 | Cluster |
| A3391 | 96.58590 | -53.69330 | Cluster |
| A3395 | 96.88000 | -54.43740 | Cluster |
| A3667 | 303.09170 | -56.81520 | Cluster |
| A3716 | 312.8600 | -52.70700 | Cluster |
| A2399 | 329.37260 | -7.796920 | Cluster |
| A0119 | 14.067150 | -1.255370 | Cluster |
| A0085 | 10.460211 | -9.303184 | Cluster |
| G09 | 135 | 0 | WAVES-North |
| G12 | 180 | 0 | WAVES-North |
| G15 | 225 | 0 | WAVES-North |
| G23 | 345 | -32.5 | WAVES-South |
| H01 | 15 | -30 | WAVES-South |
| H03 | 45 | -30 | WAVES-South |
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.
The Hector Input Catalogue 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
Documentation
Hector Observation Pipeline: https://github.com/SteBarsanti/Hector-Observations-Pipeline/tree/master
Notes: https://github.com/samvaughan/hector-input-catalogues/blob/main/Hector_Target_Selection_Summary.pdf
Making Tiles: https://samvaughan.info/hector-observing/
Tasks
- 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)
- Looking at the statistics on the foreground cluster galaxies and number of dwarfs delivered to understand completeness for the low mass galaxies in the cluster regions. ()
- Simulate impact of changing standard star mag limits to brighter, e.g. g <17, for better calibration accuracy. (Stefania)
- Determine the required completeness of the Hector redshift survey by considering the distribution of targets that are covered in the colour-stellar mass parameter space compared to a complete sample, then considering the impact on key science. We can use the GAMA regions where we have the whole information. ()
- 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.
- Standard star issue – reported two double star issues in 2024B Run 1 – need to check ()
- Generating catalogue for released data ()
- Suggestions of updating tiling code
Discussion on TS 23 Sept:-
The SAMI targets should be available in the manual catalogues but are not, so Mina can’t configure tiles with the SAMI overlap targets. Stefania will check.
Stefania will check catalogue and select a broad range of SAMI galaxies to be sure they are not all red ellipticals. Need to then make 2 fields (early and late night) with SAMI galaxies for all targets.
Need a table on the TS wiki showing which runs and tiles contain the early science targets.
Need to check the seeding of the tiles when the full cat is run is accurately reproducing the same sub-selected galaxies in the catalogue.
Decision on Cluster tiling priorities:-
8 All blue galaxies
7 red >R200
6 red<R200
5 foreground low mass dwarfs, milky way analogues, edge-on wind candidates.
4 all foreground galaxies
3
2
1 Already observed
Plan for Mina to continue making tiles for the Sept run but Stefania to retile with these priorities in time for Mina to configure for the following run.