The Javalambre-PAU Astrophysical Survey

The Javalambre-PAU Astrophysical Survey (J-PAS) is a very wide field Cosmological 

Survey to be carried out from the Javalambre Observatory in Spain with a 

purpose-built, dedicated 2.5m telescope, using a set of 54 narrow band and 5 broad 

band filters over a 1.3Gpix, 5deg2 FOV camera. Starting in early 2015,  J-PAS will 

image 8500deg2 of Northern Sky and obtain 0.003(1 + z) precision photometric 

redshifts for 90M galaxies, > 50 times more than the largest current spectroscopic 

survey, sampling an effective volume of ∼ 16 Gpc3. Thanks to its innovative design, 

J-PAS will be the first experiment to reach a factor of 100 improvement over current 

constraints in the Dark Energy FoM, by 2020, before other Stage IV projects like 

Euclid and LSST start their operations. The instrumental development of J-PAS 

involves a small fraction of the cost and complexity of a high multiplexing 

spectrograph, yet it will produce data which enable a much wider range of 

Astrophysical applications: J-PAS effectively uses a 5deg2 IFU which will produce 

a 3D image of the Extragalactic Northern sky. J-PAS will have a lasting legacy value, 

serving as a fundamental dataset for future projects.