ECOLE: Exploring COSMOS with LOFAR's Eyes

Overview

ECOLE (PI: Vardoulaki) is a LOFAR2.0 Large Project Proposal that aims to map the COSMOS field at low frequencies. We are proposing for simultaneous observations with the Low Band Antenna (LBA) at 60 MHz and the High Band Antenna (HBA) at 150 MHz, including all international stations that are part of the International LOFAR Telescope (ILT). The proposed duration of the observations is 3 years for 324 hours of observations to enable multi-wavelength state-of-the-art science. For more information contact the proposal PI directly at (eleni [at] tls-tautenburg [dot] de).

Figure 1: Comparison between radio surveys at COSMOS for a zoomed-in region.

Figure 2: Cutouts of objects of interest highlighting 3GHz sensitivity and resolution (0.75"; 2.3 μJy/beam; Smolčić et al. 2017) compared to current LOFAR 144 MHz observations (6"x12"; 100μJy/beam; PI: Vardoulaki)

The aim of these observations are to:

complete the radio coverage of the COSMOS field, spanning from 60 MHz to 10 GHz;
to obtain higher sensitivity and (sub)-arcsecond resolution at low frequencies to match the GHz datasets;
to combine multi-wavelength observations to address open questions about galaxy evolution from the era of re-ionisation to the nearby Universe, active and star-forming galaxies, and groups and clusters of galaxies.

The proposal has also an outreach, citizen science and education aspect, with the goal to encourage involvement of the next generation to astrophysical research.

Figure 3: Radio continuum surveys in COSMOS and proposed observations at HBA and LBA (black x) and including the international station (LOFAR-VLBI; green band).

Figure 4: Multi-wavelength coverage of the COSMOS field as presented in the COSMOS2020 catalogue (Weaver et al. 2023).

The team is composed of international researchers of all career stages and multiple expertise in observational, analytical, computational, and theoretical backgrounds. The team is composed of equal numbers of permanent and non-permanent scientists. Early career researchers and students compose ~25% of the team. The European spread represents 10 out of the 14 ILT country-members; we do not have representation from Bulgaria, Ireland, Latvia, and Sweden. The gender ratio of the team is ~65%-35%.

Figure 5: Pie charts presenting different statistics of our team.

Detailed Organization and Expertise of the Team

Management team: Vardoulaki, Morabito, Shimwell, Casey, Faisst, Kartaltepe, Koekemoer, Sargent
Processing experts and pipeline development: Drabent, de Gasperin, Duan, Bonnassieux, Basu, de Jong, Morabito, Pasini, Pommier, Timmerman, Zheng, Shimwell, Hardcastle
Radio observations and analysis: Vardoulaki, Sargent, Zamorani, Koekemoer, Bondi, Rowlinson, Talia, An, Gozaliasl, Vaccari, de Gasperin, Ito, Jin, Lambrides, Casey, Faisst, Schinnerer, Gruppioni, Morabito, Aravena, Gentile, Jimenez Andrade, Shimwell, Tang, Bowler, Pommier, Pasini, Hale, Bonato, Magnelli, Leslie
LOFAR observations: Vardoulaki, Zamorani, Bondi, Rowlinson, An, Kartaltepe, Vaccari, de Gasperin, Morabito, Shimwell, Pommier, Pasini, Hale, Bonato, Leslie
HBA experience: Bondi, Shimwell, Morabito, Rowlinson, An, Vaccari, de Gasperin, Vardoulaki, Pommier, Pasini, Hale, Bonato, Hoang, Leslie, Hodge
LBA experience: de Gasperin, Hoang, Pasini, Pommier, Shimwell, Morabito, Rowlinson, and LOFAR-VLBI experience (Morabito, Shimwell, Mamta, Petley, Vardoulaki
Multi-wavelength science: Vardoulaki, Morabito, Sargent, Koekemoer, Kartaltepe, Faisst, Zamorani, Jimenez Andrade, Casey, Finoguenov, An, Gozaliasl, Vaccari, Aravena, Hodge, Lambrides, Mooley, et al.
Citizen science, education and outreach: Vardoulaki, Tang, Faisst, Calistro Rivera, Liu, Kukreti, Magliocchetti, Piotrowska, Hardcastle, Saxena, Misra, Kartaltepe, Bowles
Commensality: Transients proposal (PI: Rowlinson)

Full List of Team Members

Eleni Vardoulaki (PI: Thüringer Landessternwarte Tautenburg, Germany)

Leah Morabito (Durham University, UK)

Timothy Shimwell (ASTRON, The Netherlands)

Mark Sargent (International Space Science Institute Bern, Switzerland)

Philip Best (IfA, Edinburgh, UK)

Anton M. Koekemoer (Space Telescope Science Institute, USA)

Marco Bondi (INAF-IRA, Italy)

Jeyhan Kartaltepe (Rochester Institute of Technology, USA)

Antonia Rowlinson (University of Amsterdam and ASTRON, The Netherlands)

Margherita Talia (University of Bologna, Italy)

Gianni Zamorani (INAF, Italy)

Eric F. Jimenez Andrade (National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), Mexico)

Alexis Finoguenov (Univeresity of Helsinki, Finland)

Vernesa Smolčić (Zagreb University, Croatia)

Hongming Tang (Department of Astronomy, Tsinghua University, China)

Andreas Faisst (Caltech, USA)

Caitlin Casey (University of Texas at Austin, USA)

Ghassem Gozaliasl (University Of Helsinki, Finland)

Fangxia An (Purple Mountain Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China)

Elizabeth (Betsey) Adams (ASTRON, The Netherlands)

Manuel Aravena (University of Diego Portales, Chile)

Aritra Basu (Thüringer Landessternwarte Tautenburg, Germany)

Matteo Bonato (INAF-IRA, Italy)

Etienne Bonnassieux (JMU Wuerzburg, Germany)

Rebecca Bowler (University of Manchester, UK)

Micah Bowles (University of Manchester, UK)

Marcus Brüggen (University of Hamburg, Germany)

Gabriela Calistro Rivera (European Southern Observatory, Germany)

Ettore Carretti (INAF-IRA Bologna, Italy)

Hrishikesh Digambar Shetgaonkar (JMU Würzburg, Germany)

Qiao Duan (Jodrell bank centre for astrophysics, The University of Manchester, UK)

Ruizhe Feng (Department of Astronomy, Tsinghua University, China)

Francesco de Gasperin (INAF-IRA, Italy)

Alexander Drabent (Thüringer Landessternwarte Tautenburg, Germany)

Vibor Jelic (Ruder Boskovic Institute, Croatia)

Emmy Escott (Durham University, USA)

Maximilien Franco (University of Texas, Austin, USA)

Fabrizio Gentile (University of Bologna, Italy)

Carlotta Gruppioni (INAF, Italy)

Catherine Hale (University of Edinburgh, UK)

Martin Hardcastle (Herdfordshire, UK)

Thomas Harvey (University of Manchester, UK)

Duy Hoang (Hamburg University, Germany)

Jacqueline Hodge (Leiden Observatory, The Netherlands)

Matthias Hoeft (Thüringer Landessternwarte Tautenburg, Germany)

Zsofi Igo (MPE, Germany)

Kei Ito (University of Tokyo, Japan)

Shuowen Jin (Cosmic Dawn Center, Technical University of Denmark, Denmark)

Jurjen de Jong (Leiden Observatory, The Netherlands)

Rohit Kondapally (University of Edinburgh, UK)

Pranav Kukreti (Kapteyn Institute and ASTRON, The Netherlands)

Erini Lambrides (NASA, USA)

Maritza A. Lara-López (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain)

Sarah K. Leslie (Leiden Observatory, The Netherlands)

Qiong Li (University of Manchester, UK)

Charles Liu (City University of New York, USA)

Manuela Magliocchetti (INAF-IAPS , Italy)

Benjamin Magnelli (CEA Paris-Saclay, France)

Lucia Marchetti (University of Cape Town, South Africa)

Sean McGee (University of Birmingham, UK)

Andrea Merloni (MPE, Germany)

George Miley (Sterrewacht, Leiden University, The Netherlands)

Arpita Misra (Astronomical Observatory of the Jagiellonian University, Poland)

Kunal Mooley (IIT Kanpur, Caltech, India)

Thibaud Moutard (LAM / ESAC, France)

Thomas Pasini (IRA-INAF, Italy)

James Petley (Durham University, UK)

Julia Piotrowska (Jagiellonian University in Cracow, Poland)

Mamta Pommier (University of Lyon, France)

Brant Robertson (University of California, Santa Cruz, USA)

Huub Rottgering (Leiden, The Netherlands)

Sagar Sethi (Astronomical Observatory of the Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland)

Aayush Saxena (University of Oxford, UK)

Eva Schinnerer (MPIA, Germany)

Kartik Sheth (NASA, USA)

Dominik Schwarz (Bielefeld University, Germany)

Roland Timmerman (Durham University, UK)

Lingyu Wang (SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research & University of Groningen, The Netherlands)

Mattia Vaccari (University of Cape Town, South Africa)

Jinglan Zheng (Bielefeld University, Germany)

Xuechen Zheng (Shanghai Astronomical Observatory, China)

ECOLE: Exploring COSMOS with LOFAR's Eyes