Related papers: Giant Ly-alpha nebulae in the high redshift (z>2) …
High redshift radio galaxies are great cosmological tools for pinpointing the most massive objects in the early Universe: massive forming galaxies, active super--massive black holes and proto--clusters. We report on deep narrow--band…
We have obtained the first constraints on extended Ly-alpha emission at z ~ 1 in a sample of five radio galaxies. We detect Ly-alpha emission from four of the five galaxies. The Ly-alpha luminosities range from 0.1 - 4 times 10^43 erg/s and…
We present an investigation into the possible relationship between side-to-side asymmetries of powerful radio galaxies at high redshift, with the goal of understanding the geometry, orientation and gas dynamics of these sources. Our sample…
The most massive galaxies in the present-day Universe are found to lie in the centres of rich clusters. They have old, coeval stellar populations suggesting that the bulk of their stars must have formed at early epochs in spectacular…
Massive galaxies, such as nearby ellipticals, have relatively low number densities, yet they host the majority of the stellar mass in the universe. Understanding their origin is a central problem of galaxy formation. Age dating of stellar…
We report deep Keck narrow-band Lya images of the luminous z > 3 radio galaxies 4C 41.17, 4C 60.07, and B2 0902+34. The images show giant, 100-200 kpc scale emission line nebulae, centered on these galaxies, which exhibit a wealth of…
Extended nebulae of Ly-alpha emission ("Ly-alpha blobs") are known to be associated with overdense regions at high redshift. Here we present six large Ly-alpha blobs in a previously known protocluster with galaxy overdensity delta ~ 7 at z…
The history of galaxy formation via star formation and stellar mass assembly rates is now known with some certainty, yet the connection between high redshift and low redshift galaxy populations is not yet clear. By identifying and studying…
At low redshifts powerful radio sources are uniquely associated with massive galaxies, and are thought to be powered by supermassive black holes. Modern 8m -- 10m telescopes may be used used to find their likely progenitors at very high…
Large nebulae (>50 kpc) emitting strongly in Lya (also known as Lya ``blobs'') are likely signposts of ongoing massive galaxy formation. The relative rarity of these sources and their discovery in well-studied galaxy overdensities suggest…
About 54% of radio galaxies at z>3 and 8% of radio galaxies at 2<z<3 show unusually strong Ly-alpha emission, compared with the general population of high redshift (z>2) radio galaxies. These Ly-alpha excess objects (LAEs) show…
Analysis of the deepest available images of the sky, obtained by the Hubble Space Telescope, reveals a large number of candidate high-redshift galaxies. A catalogue of 1,683 objects is presented, with estimated redshifts ranging from $z=0$…
Context. Searching for high-redshift galaxies is a field of intense activity in modern observational cosmology that will continue to grow with future ground-based and sky observatories. Over the last few years, a lot has been learned about…
The simple reading of the evidence is that the large elliptical galaxies existed at about the present star mass and comoving number density at redshift z=2. This is subject to the usual uncertainties of measurement and interpretation in…
Determing the nature of the bright sub-mm sources and their role in the process of galaxy formation is likely to be a major focus of extra-galactic research over the next few years. In particular, we would like to know if these sources are…
The importance of studying old elliptical galaxies at redshift z ~ 1.5 is reviewed, considering both what can be learned by extending studies of the evolution of cluster galaxy scaling relations to earlier cosmic epochs, and the age-dating…
We report the serendipitous detection in high-resolution optical spectroscopy of a strong, asymmetric Ly-alpha emission line at z = 5.190. The detection was made in a 2.25 hour exposure with the Echelle Spectrograph and Imager on the Keck…
We present deep near-IR images of high redshift radio galaxies obtained with NIRC on the Keck I telescope. In most cases, the near-IR data sample rest wavelengths at ~4000 Angstroms, free of strong emission lines. At z > 3, the rest frame…
Of the many ways of detecting high redshift galaxies, the selection of objects due to their redshifted Ly-alpha emission has become one of the most successful. But what types of galaxies are selected in this way? Until recently, Ly-alpha…
The morphological and spectroscopic properties of the giant (>60 kpc) Ly-alpha nebulae associated with three radio galaxies at z~2.5 (MRC 1558-003, MRC 2025-218 and MRC 0140-257) have been investigated using integral field spectroscopic…