English

Constraints on the Unseen Galaxy Population from the Lyman-alpha Forest

Astrophysics 2007-05-23 v1

Abstract

Here we describe results of our attempt to determine what types of galaxies are responsible for the Lyman-alpha forest absorption systems, based on our ongoing imaging and spectroscopic survey of faint galaxies in fields of HST spectroscopic target QSOs. Our primary conclusions are that the bulk of the Lyman-alpha forest arises in more or less normal galaxies (that span the normal range of luminosity and morphology) and that any ``unseen'' low surface brightness galaxies are unlikely to contribute significantly to the luminosity density of the universe.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/9812272,
  title  = {Constraints on the Unseen Galaxy Population from the Lyman-alpha Forest},
  author = {Kenneth M. Lanzetta and Hsiao-Wen Chen and John K. Webb and Xavier Barcons},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/9812272},
  year   = {2007}
}

Comments

8 pages, 4 figures, invited review for IAU Colloquium 171, The Low Surface Brightness Universe