The 6dF galaxy redshift survey

The 6dF instrument is a multi-fibre spectrograph for the Anglo-Australian Observatory's United Kingdom Schmidt Telescope (UKST). The largest project planned for the instrument is the 6dF GRS (e.g., Watson et al. 1998, 2000). This will involve obtaining the spectra of

galaxy candidates, as identified in the 2 Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS; Jarrett et al. 2000), to a limiting magnitude of K = 13.0. About 175 nights of observing time will be required for the 6dF survey, which should be complete by mid-2003. The 6dF instrument can obtain 150 spectra simultaneously, but the integration time required is rather long, at about an hour, due to the small aperture of telescope (-m). The spectra will cover the range between 3900 Å and 7400 Å, with a resolution of 3.5 Å and a signal-to-noise ratio of per pixel.

The main scientific justification for the 6dF survey, given the existence of the 2dF GRS and the SDSS, is the near-infrared selection, as this relates directly to the old stellar population of the local galaxies. However there are several other distinctions important to the possibility of finding spectroscopic lenses. With a mean redshift of the 6dF GRS is considerably shallower than the 2dF sample, which has an average redshift of . The 6dF spectra will have a similar signal-to-noise ratio per unit wavelength, but will cover a slightly smaller range.

© Copyright Astronomical Society of Australia 1997