May 26, 2017

DEVILS (the Deep Extragalactic VIsible Legacy Survey), a spectroscopic campaign aimed at bridging the near and distant Universe by undertaking the highest completeness survey, got approved and will start taking spectra right now. The survey aims for about 58k galaxies at 0.3 < z < 1.0 with r < 22 and Y < 21.2 over 6 square-degrees including COSMOS and SXDS. The spectra are taken with the AAOmega and 2dF spectrographs on the Australian Astronomical Telescope.

DEVILS will allow a detailed study of the evolution of galaxies and structure, and the dark matter baryon interface on <Mpc scales. it will constrain

• the influence of multi-scale environment on galaxy evolution
• the evolution of the dark matter distribution over the last ~8Gyrs.

These are important steps to build a complete picture of how galaxies develop from the simple systems that first formed into the impressive structures we see in the local Universe, like our own Milky Way.