Wide-Field Astronomical Surveys in the Next Decade

Wide-angle surveys have been an engine for new discoveries throughout the modern history of astronomy, and have been among the most highly cited and scientifically productive observing facilities in recent years. This trend is likely to continue over the next decade, as many of the most important questions in astrophysics are best tackled with massive surveys, often in synergy with each other and in tandem with the more traditional observatories. We argue that these surveys are most productive and have the greatest impact when the data from the surveys are made public in a timely manner. The rise of the survey astronomer is a substantial change in the demographics of our field; one of the most important challenges of the next decade is to find ways to recognize the intellectual contributions of those who work on the infrastructure of surveys (hardware, software, survey planning and operations, and databases/data distribution), and to make career paths to allow them to thrive.

Dark Matter in the Galaxy Cluster CL J1226+3332 at Z=0.89

We present a weak-lensing analysis of the galaxy cluster CL J1226+3332 at z=0.89 using Hubble Space Telescope Advanced Camera for Surveys images. The cluster is the hottest (>10 keV), most X-ray luminous system at z>0.6 known to date. The relaxed X-ray morphology, as well as its high temperature, is unusual at such a high redshift. Our mass reconstruction shows that on a large scale the dark matter distribution is consistent with a relaxed system with no significant substructures. However, on a small scale the cluster core is resolved into two mass clumps highly correlated with the cluster galaxy distribution. The dominant mass clump lies close to the brightest cluster galaxy whereas the other less massive clump is located ~40 (~310 kpc) to the southwest. Although this secondary mass clump does not show an excess in the X-ray surface brightness, the gas temperature of the region is much higher (12~18 keV) than those of the rest. We propose a scenario in which the less massive system has already passed through the main cluster and the X-ray gas has been stripped during this passage. The elongation of the X-ray peak toward the southwestern mass clump is also supportive of this possibility. We measure significant tangential shears out to the field boundary (~1.5 Mpc), which are well described by an Navarro-Frenk-White profile with a concentration parameter of c200=2.7+-0.3 and a scale length of rs=78+-19 (~600 kpc) with chi^2/d.o.f=1.11. Within the spherical volume r200=1.6 Mpc, the total mass of the cluster becomes M(r<r200)=(1.4+-0.2) x 10^15 solar mass. Our weak-lensing analysis confirms that CL1226+3332 is indeed the most massive cluster known to date at z>0.6.

LSST and the Dark Sector: Image Processing Challenges

Next generation probes of dark matter and dark energy require high precision reconstruction of faint galaxy shapes from hundreds of dithered exposures. Current practice is to stack the images. While valuable for many applications, this stack is a highly compressed version of the data. Future weak lensing studies will require analysis of the full dataset using the stack and its associated catalog only as a starting point. We describe a Multi-Fit algorithm which simultaneously fits individual galaxy exposures to a common profile model convolved with each exposures point spread function at that position in the image. This technique leads to an enhancement of the number of usable small galaxies at high redshift and, more significantly, a decrease in systematic shear error.