Ultradeep near-infrared imaging of the HDF-South: rest-frame optical properties of high redshift galaxies
Abstract
We have obtained ultradeep J_s, H and K_s near-infrared imaging of the Hubble Deep Field South WFPC2 field with the ISAAC camera on the VLT. The total integration time of 100 hours resulted in the deepest ground-based infrared observations to date and the deepest K_s-band data ever taken. This depth allows us to determine the spectral energy distributions of the high-redshift galaxies with unprecendented accuracy. Together with existing optical observations, we use the multicolor data to select high-redshift galaxies by their rest-frame optical light, and study their statistical properties and morphologies. We find a wide variety of morphologies: some are large in the rest-frame optical and resemble normal spiral galaxies, others are barely detected in the observers optical and have red NIR colors. The latter belong to a new population of galaxies at redshifts z>2, that is notably absent in the HDF-North. The spectral energy distributions of many of such red galaxies show distinct breaks, which we identify as the balmer break/4000 Angstrom break, and their contribution to the stellar mass density is estimated to be substantial. At redshift z~3, we find a clear excess of superluminious galaxies (> 5 L*_B(z = 0)), which is consistent with 1 magnitude of luminosity evolution. Overall, the results show the necessity of deep near-infrared imaging to obtain a full census of the high redshift universe.
Additional Information
© 2003 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). We would like to thank the ESO staff for their assistance and their hard efforts in taking these data and making them available to us.Attached Files
Published - 195.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 91825
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20181213-143634078
- Created
-
2018-12-13Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
-
2021-11-16Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Series Name
- Proceedings of SPIE
- Series Volume or Issue Number
- 4834