| Description |
NASA.s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE)
has surveyed the entire sky at 3.4, 4.6, 12 and 22 microns
(W1, W2, W3, and W4), reaching sensitivities hundreds of times
deeper than IRAS. We have used WISE photometry to select an
all-sky sample of objects which are extremely luminous.
The objects are prominent in W4, but faint or undetected
in W1 and W2 (W12drops). Followup spectroscopy of virgul 100 sources
shows over 70% of W12drops have redshifts > 1.6, which with
OT1 PACS and SPIRE photometry of 27 sources leads to over 1E13
solar luminosities, with virgul 10% exceeding 1E14 solar luminosities.
High resolution adaptive optics imaging shows these objects are
unlensed. We request 47.3 hours of Herschel time to complete
the all-sky sample of the brightest 185 W12 drops,
fulfilling the primary WISE objective of finding
the most extreme luminous IR galaxies in the Universe.
These superlative objects will be the most fruitful for
detailed studies of the physics of star formation, AGN fueling,
and feedback in the most active galaxies. |
