Progress in galaxy redshift surveys using FLAIR

Abstract

Among the most important stimuli for developing the Fiber-Linked Array-Image Reformatter (FLAIR) multiobject spectroscopy system on the 1.2-m UK Schmidt Telescope was its potential for carrying out large-scale redshift surveys of galaxies of intermediate magnitude (B less than about 17). During FLAIR's lengthy development period, these objects provided the yardstick by which the system's performance was measured, and a number of limited-area redshift surveys were carried out. We are now following these with a 1-in-3 survey over the 60 fields of the ROE/Durham Galaxy Catalogue to produce a redshift map of some 4000 galaxies out to a distance of about 300/h Mpc (where the parameter h is the Hubble constant expressed as a fraction of 100 km/s M/pc). In this paper we summarize the results from our redshift surveys to highlight the capabilities of FLAIR.