LEGA-C - Large Early Galaxy Astrophysics Census

The Large Early Galaxy Astrophysics Census (LEGA-C) is an ESO 130−night public spectroscopic survey conducted with VIMOS on the Very Large Telescope. The survey covers the 1.4 square degrees of the UltraVISTA survey in the COSMOS field (R.A. = 10h00; Dec. = +2 deg). The VIMOS high-resolution red grating is used in combination with the GG475 order separation filter, which results in a typical wavelength range of ∼ 6300Å – 8800Å at a resolution of R = 2500 and a dispersion of 0.6Å per pixel. LEGA-C’s unique combination of sample size and depth enables for the first time to map the stellar content at large look-back time (8 Gigayears), across galaxies of different types and star-formation activity. Core science goals are, among others, to chart the star formation histories of galaxies, quenching of star formation, evolution of galaxy kinematics and other scaling relations. Observations started in December 2014 and were completed by March 2018.