Carnegie Observatories - Pasadena, February 15-17, 2017
A paramount objective in observational astrophysics is to detect and characterize the earliest objects in the universe in order to answer fundamental outstanding questions. For instance, when and how did the first stars, galaxies, and black holes form? Or what were the main sources that caused the reionization of the universe? The discovery of the first z>6 quasars almost fifteen years ago, opened up a new window to study the universe's properties far back into the epoch of reionization, the current frontier of astrophysical research.
Over the last few years the number of known z>6 quasars has increased significantly. This has allowed for the initial statistical characterization of some of the first massive galaxies and black holes that formed in the universe. Several investigations on these high-z quasars are underway using the most powerful existing telescopes such as Magellan, VLT, Gemini, Keck, Spitzer, HST, JVLA, NOEMA, and ALMA. These studies are crucial to deepening our understanding of the universe during its first billion years and paving the way to a plethora of investigations with the many new facilities that are coming online or are being built.
These very bright and distant quasars are ideal first light sources to test key capabilities of the next generation of space and ground-based telescopes. The JWST launch is just around the corner and promises to revolutionize our view of the early universe in currently unimaginable ways. The first call for JWST early release science (ERS) proposals is in August 2017, while a letter of intent is required by March 2017. Therefore, now is the time to discuss and plan projects on high-z quasars that would exploit the unparalleled JWST capabilities and benefit the community the most.
Topics to be discussed during the workshop:
Where we are: summary of progress to date and on-going projects on high-z quasars
Where we are going: high-z quasars with the next generation of telescopes such as JWST, WFIRST, Euclid, LSST, and the 30m-class telescopes