4MOST Survey Strategy Plan

Abstract

The current status of and motivation for the 4MOST Survey Strategy, as developed by the Consortium science team, are presented here. Key elements of the strategy are described, such as sky coverage, number of visits and total exposure times in different parts of the sky, and how to deal with different observing conditions. The task of organising the strategy is not simple, with many different surveys that have vastly different target brightnesses and densities, sample completeness levels, and signal-to-noise requirements. We introduce here a number of concepts that we will use to ensure all surveys are optimised. Astronomers who are planning to submit a Participating Survey proposal are strongly encouraged to read this article and any relevant 4MOST Survey articles in this issue of The Messenger such that they can optimally complement and benefit from the planned surveys of the 4MOST Consortium.

Part of the 4MOST issue of The Messenger, published in preparation of 4MOST Community Workshop, see http://www.eso.org/sci/meetings/2019/4MOST.html

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Mapping the Stellar Halo with the H3 Spectroscopic Survey
• OzDES multi-object fibre spectroscopy for the Dark Energy Survey: Results and second data release
• Assessing the performance of LTE and NLTE synthetic stellar spectra in a machine learning framework
• A Lower Limit on the Mass of Our Galaxy from the H3 Survey
• An optimised tiling pattern for multi-object spectroscopic surveys: application to the 4MOST survey