Progress in Galaxy Redshift Surveys using FLAIR

Abstract

Among the most important stimuli for developing the FLAIR multi-object 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 < approximately 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 approximately 300h-1 Mpc (where the parameter h is the Hubble constant expressed as a fraction of 100 kms-1 Mpc-1). In this paper we summarise the results from our redshift surveys to highlight the capabilities of FLAIR. We present a status report on the current large-scale survey, and show that the recently-introduced FLAIR II system will speed its progress considerably.