7,536 research outputs found
EVOLUTION OF IR-SELECTED GALAXIES IN Z~0.4 CLUSTERS
Wide-field optical and near--IR () imaging is presented for two rich
galaxy clusters: Abell~370 at and Abell~851 (Cl0939+47) at .
Galaxy catalogs selected from the near--IR images are 90\% complete to
approximately 1.5 mag below resulting in samples with 100
probable member galaxies per cluster in the central 2 Mpc. Comparison
with WFPC images yields subsamples of 70 galaxies in each cluster
with morphological types. Analysis of the complete samples and the
subsamples shows that the E/S0s are bluer than those in the Bower
et al.\ (1992) Coma sample in the optical color by ~mag for Abell~370
and by ~mag for Abell~851. If real, the bluing of the E/S0 populations at
moderate redshift is consistent with that calculated from the Bruzual and
Charlot (1993) models of passive elliptical galaxy evolution. In both clusters
the intrinsic scatter of the known E/S0s about their optical color--mag
relation is small ( mag) and not significantly different from that
of Coma E/S0s as given by Bower et al.\ (1992), indicating that the galaxies
within each cluster formed at the same time at an early epoch.Comment: uuencoded gzipped tar file containing latex files of manuscript (42
pages) plus tables (9 pages); figures available by anonymous ftp at
ftp://ipac.caltech.edu//pub/pickup/sed ; accepted for publication in the Ap
The K-selected Butcher-Oemler Effect
[abridged] We investigate the Butcher-Oemler effect in a sample of K-selected
galaxies in 33 clusters at 0.15 < z < 0.92. We attempt to duplicate the
original Butcher-Oemler analysis as closely as possible given the
characteristics of our data. We find that the infrared selected blue fractions
are lower than those measured in the optical and that the trend with redshift
is much weaker. Comparison with optical data in clusters in common with Butcher
& Oemler (1984) shows that infrared selection is the primary difference between
our study and optically selected samples. We suggest that the Butcher-Oemler
effect is in large part due to a population of star-forming low mass galaxies
which will evolve into dwarf galaxies. These early results point to the need
for larger and deeper infrared samples of cluster galaxies to address this
issueComment: 37 pages, 19 figures, ApJ accepted (vol 598 n1
Near-IR imaging of moderate redshift galaxy clusters
We have obtained near-IR imaging of 3 moderate-z clusters on the 1.3 m at KPNO with SQIID, a new camera offering wide-field (5.5 arcmin) simultaneous JHK band imaging. Our photometry on a sample of approximately 100 likely member galaxies in one of the clusters, Abell 370 at z = 0.37, shows that we can obtain magnitudes good to 20 percent down to K = 18, considerably below the estimated K* = 16.5 at this redshift. These data indicate that there are no systematic problems in obtaining photometry at faint levels with SQIID. With the development of larger arrays, the field is open to progress. The resulting J, H, and K data for three clusters are combined with previously obtained multiband optical photometry. We present an investigation of the spectral properties and evolution of the dominant cold stellar populations by comparing optical-to-IR colors and color-magnitude diagrams to predictions from population synthesis models and galaxy spectral evolution codes
An IR-Selected Galaxy Cluster at z=1.27
We report the discovery of a galaxy cluster at z=1.27. ClG J0848+4453 was
found in a near-IR field survey as a high density region of objects with very
red J-K colors. Optical spectroscopy of a limited number of 24 < R < 25 objects
in the area shows that 6 galaxies within a 90 arcsec (0.49/h Mpc, q_O = 0.1)
diameter region lie at z=1.273 +/- 0.002. Most of these 6 member galaxies have
broad-band colors consistent with the expected spectral energy distribution of
a passively-evolving elliptical galaxy formed at high redshift. An additional 2
galaxies located ~2 arcmin from the cluster center are also at z=1.27. Using
all 8 of these spectroscopic members, we estimate the velocity dispersion is
700 +/- 180 km/s, similar to that of Abell R=1 clusters in the present epoch. A
deep Rosat PSPC observation detects X-ray emission at the 5 sigma level
coincident with the nominal cluster center. Assuming that the X-ray flux is
emitted by hot gas trapped in the potential well of a collapsed system (no AGN
is known to exist in the area), the resulting X-ray luminosity in the rest
frame 0.1-2.4 keV band of L_x = 1.5 x 10^44 ergs/s suggests the presence of a
moderately large mass. ClG J0848+4453 is the highest redshift cluster found
without targetting a central active galaxy.Comment: Accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journal; 22 pages, 6
figures; corrected titl
Distant radio galaxies in the near IR
We are carrying out a program of near IR imaging and spectroscopy of radio galaxies with redshifts of 1.5 and greater. One of its principal goals is to constrain the ages and star formation histories of massive galaxies at early epochs. The radio galaxies are drawn from the survey of 1Jy class sources by McCarthy et al (1989) and McCarthy (1990). The sample contains 18 radio galaxies with redshifts greater than 2 and an additional 10 objects with 1.5 less than z less than 2.0. The redshifts were obtained from long slit spectra with the CTIO 4 m. While the galaxies are quite faint (r approximately = 21-24.5) all have Lyman alpha emission with rest frame equivalent widths of 100 - 1000 A. Multicolor photometry in the g,r,i and J,H,K bands has been obtained with the 2.5-m Du Pont Telescope on Las Campanas and with the Hale 5 m telescope at Palomar. We have recently obtained near IR spectra, using the 4 m telescopes at KPNO and CTIO, of a few objects with the goal of determining the Lyman alpha/H-alpha ratio and hence the reddening
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