528 research outputs found
NICMOS Imaging of the Dusty Microjansky Radio Source VLA J123642+621331 at z = 4.424
We present the discovery of a radio galaxy at a likely redshift of z = 4.424
in one of the flanking fields of the Hubble Deep Field. Radio observations with
the VLA and MERLIN centered on the HDF yielded a complete sample of microjansky
radio sources, of which about 20% have no optical counterpart to I < 25 mag. In
this Letter, we address the possible nature of one of these sources, through
deep HST NICMOS images in the F110W (J) and F160W (H) filters. VLA
J123642+621331 has a single emission line at 6595-A, which we identify with
Lyman-alpha at z = 4.424. We argue that this faint (H = 23.9 mag), compact (r =
0.2 arcsec), red (I - K = 2.0) object is most likely a dusty, star-forming
galaxy with an embedded active nucleus.Comment: Accepted for publication in Astrophysical Journal Letters. 11 pages,
4 figures, uses aastex v5.0 and psfi
Optical Morphologies of Millijansky Radio Galaxies Observed by HST and in the VLA FIRST Survey
We report on a statistical study of the 51 radio galaxies at the millijansky
flux level from the Faint Images of the Radio Sky at Twenty centimeters,
including their optical morphologies and structure obtained with the Hubble
Space Telescope. Our optical imaging is significantly deeper (~2 mag) than
previous studies with the superior angular resolution of space-based imaging.
We that find 8/51 (16%) of the radio sources have no optically identifiable
counterpart to AB~24 mag. For the remaining 43 sources, only 25 are
sufficiently resolved in the HST images to reliably assign a visual
classification: 15 (60%) are elliptical galaxies, 2 (8%) are late-type spiral
galaxies, 1 (4%) is an S0, 3 (12%) are point-like objects (quasars), and 4
(16%) are merger systems. We find a similar distribution of optical types with
measurements of the Sersic index. The optical magnitude distribution of these
galaxies peaks at I~20.7+-0.5 AB mag, which is ~3 mag brighter than the depth
of our typical HST field and is thus not due to the WFPC2 detection limit. This
supports the luminosity-dependent density evolutionary model, where the
majority of faint radio galaxies typically have L*-optical luminosities and a
median redshift of z~0.8 with a relatively abrupt redshift cut-off at z>~2. We
discuss our results in the context of the evolution of elliptical galaxies and
active galactic nuclei.Comment: 20 pages, 8 figures, 51 galaxy images, and 5 tables. Uses
emulateapj.cls and natbib.sty. Accepted to ApJS. High resolution images are
available upon reques
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