This $425,024 Project Grant awarded by the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Division of Astronomical Sciences will support a research program at Northwestern University to characterize the galaxy population during the "cosmic afternoon" period of the universe's history. The lead investigator and a graduate student will use the Subaru Telescope's Prime Focus Spectrograph to conduct a 130-night survey, delivering rest-optical spectra of over 240,000 galaxies at redshifts of 0.5-1.5. The team will first develop new photoionization model-based tools to measure the physical conditions in the interstellar medium of emission-line galaxies. They will then use these tools to analyze the first year of survey data and investigate the chemical enrichment and abundance patterns in a representative sample of galaxies from this key transitional period. The new parameter estimation tool will be publicly distributed, and the abundance measurements will be included in value-added catalogs as part of the first data release in 2027. The project also involves mentoring undergraduate research interns and collaborating with Chicago-area high school educators to develop research-based lesson plans.
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