Concept and Objectives

The overall objective of ELIXIR is to develop European expertise in searches for primeval galaxies and in the extraction of key physical information from deep sky observations, to ensure the maximum scientific return of the future James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) that will be launched in 2014. The ELIXIR joint work program is divided into 6 key projects, designed to provide young researchers with the multidisciplinary training required for the future exploration of the early Universe with JWST, and in particular NIRSpec. The main objectives of these projects are:

1. To use the currently most sophisticated ground-based and space-based telescopes to search for, and characterize the spectral properties of, galaxies in the early Universe.
   
   
2. To build new spectral models of galaxies to derive the physical properties of the first generation of very low-metallicity stellar populations from imaging and spectroscopic observations.
   
   
3. To combine these models with state-of-the-art cosmological simulations to constrain galaxy formation scenarios, based on the observed statistics of high-redshift galaxy populations.
   
   
4. To use spatially resolved spectroscopy to constrain the stellar and dynamical masses and the spatial distributions of metals and dust in distant galaxies.
   
   
5. To develop new models and techniques to study the internal structure and dynamics of galaxies in the early Universe during active and inactive phases of their evolution.
   
   
6. To prepare and simulate NIRSpec observations, based on industrial expertise of the instrument.