GAMA: towards a physical understanding of galaxy formation

Understand

The Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA) project is the latest in a tradition of large galaxy redshift surveys, and is now underway on the 3.9m Anglo-Australian Telescope at Siding Spring Observatory.

• GAMA is designed to map extragalactic structures on scales of 1kpc - 1Mpc in complete detail to a redshift of z~0.2, and to trace the distribution of luminous galaxies out to z~0.5.
• The principal science aim is to test the standard hierarchical structure formation paradigm of Cold Dark Matter (CDM) on scales of galaxy groups, pairs, discs, bulges and bars.
• We will measure (1) the Dark Matter Halo Mass Function (as inferred from galaxy group velocity dispersions); (2) baryonic processes, such as star formation and galaxy formation efficiency (as derived from Galaxy Stellar Mass Functions); and (3) the evolution of galaxy merger rates (via galaxy close pairs and galaxy asymmetries).