William C. Keel et al. 2009 The Astronomical Journal 138 986 doi:10.1088/0004-6256/138/3/986
William C. Keel1, Raymond E. White III1, Scott Chapman2 and Rogier A. Windhorst3
Show affiliationsLyα blobs—luminous, spatially extended emission-line nebulae, often lacking bright continuum counterparts—are common in dense environments at high redshift. Until recently, atmospheric absorption and filter technology have limited our knowledge of any similar objects at z ≤ 2. We use Galaxy Evolution Explorer slitless spectroscopy to search for similar objects in the rich environments of two known cluster and supercluster fields at z = 0.8, where the instrumental sensitivity peaks. The regions around Cl 1054–0321 and Cl 0023+0423 were each observed in slitless-spectrum mode for 10-19 ks, with accompanying direct images of 3-6 ks to assist in recognizing continuum sources. Using several detection techniques, we find no resolved Lyα emitters to a flux limit of (1.5-9) × 10–15 erg cm–2 s–1, on size scales of 5-30 arcsec. This corresponds to line luminosities of (0.5-3) × 1043 erg s–1 for linear scales 35-200 kpc. Comparison with both blind and targeted surveys at higher redshifts indicates that the population must have evolved in comoving density at least as strongly as (1 + z)3. These results suggest that the population of Lyα blobs is specific to the high-redshift universe.
galaxies: clusters: individual (Cl 0023+0423, MS 1054–0321); galaxies: evolution; ultraviolet: galaxies
Issue 3 (2009 September)
Received 2008 August 20, accepted for publication 2009 July 11
Published 2009 August 14
William C. Keel et al. 2009 The Astronomical Journal 138 986
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