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The tidal gravitational field due to the inhomogeneous distribution of matter in the Universe causes the distortion of light bundles from distant sources. This yields a small but observable imprint on the distribution of galaxy ellipticities, an effect called cosmic shear. The statistical properties of the shear field reflect the statistical properties of the (dark) matter distribution in the Universe. Comparing the results with theoretical predictions can constrain cosmological parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) is to be installed on the Hubble Space Telescope during the next servicing mission which is scheduled for late 2001. This instrument contains a large format array, the Wide Field Camera which has a format of 4096x4096 pixels and an individual pixel size of $0.05^{\prime\prime}$. The sensitivity of the instrument is expected to be four times that of WFPC2. We produced various 1000 second simulations using our simulator SLIM to explore the usefulness of the ACS grism modes. These include a simulated HDF-N field, starburst galaxies, and high redshift QSOs. They have relatively short integration times and illustrate the wealth of data that can be obtained using this instrument. A more detailed description of these simulations can be found at http://www.stecf.org/instruments/acs/grism/DeepFieldsOO [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]