Deep mid-infrared observations of Lyman-break galaxies
Abstract
As part of the In-Orbit Checkout activities for the Spitzer Space Telescope, the IRAC team carried out a deep observation (average integration time ~8 hours) of a field surrounding the bright QSO HS 1700+6416. This field contains several hundred z~3 Lyman-break galaxy candidates, and we report here on their mid-infrared properties, including the IRAC detection rate, flux densities and colors, and the results of fitting population synthesis models to the optical, near-infrared, and IRAC magnitudes. The results of the model-fitting show that previous optical/near-infrared studies of LBGs were not missing large, hidden old stellar populations. The LBG candidates' properties are consistent with those of massive, star-forming galaxies at z~3. Other IRAC sources in the same field have similar properties, so IRAC selection may prove a promising method of finding additional high-redshift galaxies.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0405624,
title = {Deep mid-infrared observations of Lyman-break galaxies},
author = {P. Barmby and J. -S. Huang and G. G Fazio and J. A. Surace and R. G. Arendt and J. L. Hora and M. A. Pahre and K. L. Adelberger and P. Eisenhardt and D. K. Erb and M. Pettini and W. T. Reach and N. A. Reddy and A. E. Shapley and C. C. Steidel and D. Stern and Z. Wang and S. P. Willner},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0405624},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
ApJS in press (Spitzer special issue); 13 pages, 3 figures