Dear Colleagues,
This email is sent to everyone who has registered for the STScI
mini-workshop 'Massive galaxies over cosmic time', 27-29 September. A
preliminary schedule has been set and will be sent around shortly. The
workshop's webpage will also soon be updated, at
http://www.stsci.edu/institute/conference/mgct
** The workshop themes **
The goal of this mini-workshop is to consider the census, origin, and
evolution of the most massive galaxies from early times to the present.
In preparing talks, posters, and for the discussions, please consider
the central questions posed in the workshop announcement:
i. Is there a "massive galaxies" problem at all?
- Are the space-densities of galaxies in the top quartile of
stellar mass consistent with theoretical expectations across all cosmic
epochs?
- Do the halo masses, kinematics, clustering properties, etc. of
the most massive galaxies make sense?
- How robust/accurate are the measurements?
- How robust/unique are the models?
- What are the most crucial tests?
ii. What is the nature of "red sequence" galaxies at high and low redshift?
- Does the evolution of space-density, color, spectral properties,
kinematics, etc. of the reddest quartile of galaxies match expectations?
- Are the reddest galaxies also the most massive galaxies?
- What is the relation between the most massive galaxies and
luminous AGN?
- Where and how do "pure-luminosity evolution" models begin to
break down?
- What are the successes and failings of hierachical models?
iii. What is the relation, if any, between very dusty (star-forming) and
very massive galaxies?
- Can we identify the progenitors and descendents of luminous
sub-mm sources?
- How does the dust dissipate?
- Can we identify the progenitors of the z ~ 1.5 "extremely red
objects" among known populations at z > 2?
- Can we identify the progenitors of the most massive galaxies
today among known populations at z > 2?
We intend the workshop to be highly interactive, and encourage you to
use your presentations to address some of these questions and stimulate
discussion on the issues you feel are most important.
** Invited List Changes **
Sandy Faber and Guinevere Kauffmann were not able to come to the
workshop in the end, and so the list of confirmed Invited speakers is now:
Romeel Dave'
Carlos De Breuck
Daniel Eisenstein
Adriano Fontana
Pat McCarthy
Ken Nagamine
Alvio Renzini
Rachel Somerville
Pieter van Dokkum
Lin Yan
** Logistics **
o The Invited talks will all be 30+10 minutes, and all Contributed talks
will be 15+10 minutes.
o We are scheduling time each day for discussion, where we intend to
discuss many of the questions posed above in the context of the talks
that have already been given and recent developments.
o There will be a catered reception on-site at the end of the first day.
Drinks will be provided.
We are looking forward to having everybody here soon, for what promises
to be an interesting workshop. Please do not hesitate to email us if
there are any questions.
For the SOC,
Lexi Moustakas
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SOC:
Mark Dickinson
Harry Ferguson
Mauro Giavalisco
Karl Glazebrook
Norman Grogin
L. Moustakas
Daniel Stern
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
