MOONRISE: The Main MOONS GTO Extragalactic Survey

TL;DR

The MOONRISE survey using the MOONS instrument aims to conduct an extensive spectroscopic survey of high-redshift galaxies around Cosmic Noon, enabling detailed studies of galaxy evolution and environments during peak star formation epochs.

Contribution

This paper introduces the MOONRISE survey, leveraging MOONS' capabilities to perform unprecedented large-scale, high-quality spectroscopic observations of galaxies at z~1-2.5.

Findings

Potential to identify hundreds of thousands of high-redshift galaxies.

Enables detailed analysis of galaxy physical properties and environments.

Provides data to test galaxy formation and evolution models.

Abstract

The MOONS instrument possesses an exceptional combination of large multiplexing, high sensitivity, broad simultaneous spectral coverage (from optical to near-infrared bands), large patrol area and high fibre density. These properties provide the unprecedented potential of enabling, for the very first time, SDSS-like surveys around Cosmic Noon (z~1-2.5), when the star formation rate in the Universe peaked. The high-quality spectra delivered by MOONS will sample the same nebular and stellar diagnostics observed in extensive surveys of local galaxies, providing an accurate and consistent description of the evolution of various physical properties of galaxies, and hence a solid test of different scenarios of galaxy formation and transformation. Most importantly, by spectroscopically identifying hundreds of thousands of galaxies at high redshift, the MOONS surveys will be capable of determining the environments in which primeval galaxies lived and will reveal how such environments affected galaxy evolution. In this article, we specifically focus on the main Guaranteed Time Observation (GTO) MOONS extragalactic survey, MOONRISE, by providing an overview of its scientific goals and observing strategy.