The Brightest of Reionizing Galaxies (BoRG) survey

TL;DR

The BoRG survey uses Hubble observations to study early galaxies at z~8, providing insights into galaxy formation, luminosity functions, and clustering during the epoch of reionization.

Contribution

This paper presents the largest-area Hubble survey of z~8 galaxies, offering new observational data to test models of early galaxy formation.

Findings

Detection of luminous, rare z~8 galaxies.

Measurement of galaxy clustering at high redshift.

Comparison of observations with primordial star formation models.

Abstract

Until now, investigating the early stages of galaxy formation has been primarily the realm of theoretical modeling and computer simulations, which require many physical ingredients and are challenging to test observationally. However, the latest Hubble Space Telescope observations in the near infrared are shedding new light on the properties of galaxies within the first billion years after the Big Bang, including our recent discovery of the most distant proto-cluster of galaxies at redshift z~8. Here, I compare predictions from models of primordial and metal-enriched star formation during the dark ages with the latest Hubble observations of galaxies during the epoch of reionization. I focus in particular on the luminosity function and on galaxy clustering as measured from our Hubble Space Telescope Brightest of Reionizing Galaxies (BoRG) survey. BoRG has the largest area coverage to find luminous and rare z~8 sources that are among the first galaxies to have formed in the Universe.