Far-Ultraviolet Number Counts on Field Galaxies
Abstract
The far-ultraviolet (FUV) number counts of galaxies constrain the evolution of the star formation rate density of the universe. We report the FUV number counts computed from FUV imaging of several fields including the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, the Hubble Deep Field North, and small areas within the GOODS-North and South fields. These data were obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Solar Blind Channel of the Advance Camera for Surveys. The number counts sample an FUV AB magnitude range from 21 to 29 and cover a total area of 15.9 arcmin^2, ~4 times larger than the most recent HST FUV study. Our FUV counts intersect bright FUV Galaxy Evolution Explorer counts at 22.5 mag and they show good agreement with recent semi-analytic models based on dark matter "merger trees" by R. S. Somerville et al. We show that the number counts are ~35% lower than in previous HST studies that use smaller areas. The differences between these studies are likely the result of cosmic variance; our new data cover more lines of sight and more area than previous HST FUV studies. The integrated light from field galaxies is found to contribute between 65.9^(+8)_(–8) and 82.6^(+12)_(–)12 photons s^(–1) cm^(–2) sr^(–1) Å^(–1) to the FUV extragalactic background. These measurements set a lower limit for the total FUV background light.
Additional Information
© 2011 The American Astronomical Society. Received 2010 July 14; accepted 2011 May 6; published 2011 July 11. We are grateful to the anonymous referee for their helpful comments that improved this paper. We thank R. S. Somerville and R. C. Gilmore for providing us with their semi-analytic model and for numerous helpful discussions and comments on this paper. We also thank D. Hammer for useful science discussions and sharing number count results, and C. K. Xu for providing us with theoretical number count models. Support for Program numbers GO-10403 and GO-10872 was provided by NASA through a grant from the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Incorporated, under NASA contract NAS5-26555. E.N.V. was funded by the NASA Graduate Student Research Program grant no. NNX08AR95H. This research has made use of data obtained from the Chandra Source Catalog, provided by the Chandra X-ray Center (CXC) as part of the Chandra Data Archive. This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive, which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.Attached Files
Published - Voyer2011p15611Astrophys_J.pdf
Files
| Name | Size | Download all |
|---|---|---|
|
md5:5024d287e4bccc6e86a923bfb1e17678
|
472.2 kB | Preview Download |
Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 25177
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20110831-082331685
- GO-10403
- NASA
- GO-10872
- NASA
- NAS5-26555
- NASA
- NNX08AR95H
- NASA Graduate Student Research Fellowship
- Created
-
2011-08-31Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
-
2021-11-09Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC)