Related papers: Cosmological surveys with multi-object spectrograp…
I summarize the current spectroscopic sky surveys and some of the scientific results, emphasizing the largest sky survey to-date, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). Techniques used commonly in spectral analyses are discussed, followed by…
I present an overview of the science goals and achievements of ongoing spectroscopic surveys of individual stars in the nearby Universe. I include a brief discussion of the development of the field of Galactic Archaeology - using the fossil…
We review some of the scientific opportunities and technical challenges posed by the exploration of the large digital sky surveys, in the context of a Virtual Observatory (VO). The VO paradigm will profoundly change the way observational…
I review the present status of the mapping of the large-scale structure of the Universe through wide-angle redshift surveys. In the first part of the paper, I discuss the current state of the art, describing in some detail the recently…
Contemporary astronomy benefits of very large and rapidly growing amounts of data in all bands of the electromagnetic spectrum, from long-wavelength radio waves to high energy gamma-rays. Astronomers normally specialize in data taken in one…
Facing the advent of the next generation cosmological surveys we present a method to forecast knowledge gain on cosmological models. We propose this as a well defined and general tool to quantify the performance of different experiments in…
Several cosmological measurements have attained significant levels of maturity and accuracy over the last decade. Continuing this trend, future observations promise measurements of the statistics of the cosmic mass distribution at an…
Redshift surveys are one of the prime tools of observational cosmology. Imaging surveys of the whole sky are now available at a wide range of wavelengths, and provide a basis for the new generation of massive redshift surveys currently in…
We present the current status of cosmic shear based on all surveys done so far. Taken together, they cover more about 70 deg$^2$ and concern more than 3 million galaxies with accurate shape measurement. Theoretical expectations,…
Galaxy redshift surveys have achieved significant progress over the last couple of decades. Those surveys tell us in the most straightforward way what our local universe looks like. While the galaxy distribution traces the bright side of…
Recent developments in gravitational lensing astronomy have paved the way to genuine mappings of the gravitational potential at cosmological scales. We stress that comparing these data with traditional large scale structure surveys will…
Galaxy redshift surveys are one of the key probes in modern cosmology. In the data analysis of galaxy surveys, the precision of the statistical measurement is primarily limited by the cosmic variance on large scales. Fortunately, this…
Galaxy redshift surveys are a major tool to address the most challenging cosmological problems facing cosmology, like the nature of dark energy and properties dark matter. The same observations are useful for a much larger variety of…
The estimation of cosmological parameters from precision observables is an important industry with crucial ramifications for particle physics. This article discusses the statistical methods presently used in cosmological data analysis,…
Since 2014, MUSE, the Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer, is in operation at the ESO-VLT. It combines a superb spatial sampling with a large wavelength coverage. By design, MUSE is an integral-field instrument, but its field-of-view and…
For most of its history, cosmology was a qualitatively constrained discourse on the universe, shaped by limited observational access and the absence of global dynamical laws. This situation has changed decisively in recent decades. Modern…
I review the statistical techniques needed to extract information about physical parameters of galaxies from their observed spectra. This is important given the sheer size of the next generation of large galaxy redshift surveys. Going to…
I review the current status of cosmology as emerging from recent observations of cosmic microwave background anisotropies as well as from other sources of cosmological information.
Single-object imaging and spectroscopy on telescopes with apertures ranging from ~4 m to 40 m have the potential to greatly enhance the cosmological constraints that can be obtained from LSST. Two major cosmological probes will benefit…
A major goal of modern astrophysics is to understand the processes by which the universe evolved from its initial simplicity, as seen in measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background, to the universe we see today, with complexity on all…