Redshift Surveys With 2DF

Abstract

This IAU Joint Discussion proposes to address the subject of redshift surveys in the 21st century. This paper, however, deals with two major new redshift surveys that those involved sincerely hope will be completed in the 20th century. Nonetheless, these surveys are relevant to the topic of the meeting, as they clearly foreshadow the scope and style of redshift surveys, if not in the coming millennium, at least in the coming decade. The surveys are being carried out with the new Two Degree Field (2dF) facility on the Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT), a 400-fibre multi-object spectrograph with the capability, as described in Section 2, to increase the size of redshift surveys by an order of magnitude over current best efforts. The main scientific goals, survey strategy and some preliminary results from the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey are outlined in Section 3, while Section 4 similarly describes the 2dF QSO Redshift Survey. Further information can be found on the WWW at http://www.aao.gov.au/2df/ for the 2dF facility, at http://msowww.anu.edu.au/~colless/2dF/ for thegalaxy survey and at http://www.aao.gov.au/local/www/rs/qso_surv.html for the QSO survey.