Space Telescope Science Institute has awarded our team
- PI Andrew Wetzel
- co-PI Robyn Sanderson
- co-investigators Mike Boylan-Kolchin, James Bullock, Shea Garrison-Kimmel, Andrew Graus, Sarah Loebman, Xiangcheng Ma, Erik Tollerud, Dan Weisz
a Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Legacy Theory grant for Probing the epoch of reionization with the fossil record of nearby dwarf galaxies. Our goal is to use our FIRE-2 simulations to rigorously test and characterize how well HST near-field observations of the star-formation histories of dwarf galaxies in the Local Group can measure the faint end of the galaxy ultra-violet luminosity function during the epoch of reionization at z ~ 7. Furthermore, we will create synthetic HST and JWST observations of these simulated dwarf galaxies, to quantify how accurately the SFHs from measured stellar populations in nearby dwarfs can infer their star formation rates and UV luminosities at z ~ 7, and we will release these synthetic observations and simulation data to the scientific community, to help leverage existing HST data and guide upcoming JWST observations.