Deep slitless infrared spectroscopic surveys with HST/WFC3

Understand

HST is commonly thought of as an optical-IR imaging or UV-spectroscopy observatory.

• However, the advent of WFC3-IR made it possible to do slitless infrared spectroscopic surveys over an area significant for galaxy evolution studies (~0.15 deg^2).
• Slitless infrared spectroscopy is uniquely possible from space due to the reduced background.
• Redshift surveys with WFC3-IR offer probes of the astrophysics of the galaxy population at z=1-3 from line features, and the true redshift and spatial distribution of galaxies, that cannot be done with photometric surveys alone.