Ivo Labbe, Marijn Franx, Gregory Rudnick, Alan Moorwood, Natascha Foerster Schreiber, Hans-Walter Rix, Lottie van Starkenburg, Peter van Dokkum, Paul van der Werf, Huub Roettgering, Konrad Kuijken
We have obtained ultradeep Js, H and Ks 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 Ks-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.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.