We discuss the very red objects found in the first field of the Caltech Faint
Galaxy Redshift Survey, for which the observations and analysis are now
complete. In this field, which is 15 arcmin2 and at J005325+1234 there are
195 objects with Ks<20 mag, of which 84% have redshifts. The sample
includes 24 spectroscopically confirmed Galactic stars, 136 galaxies, three
AGNs, and 32 objects without redshifts.
About 10% of the sample has (R−K)≥5 mag. Four of these objects have
redshifts, with 0.78≤z≤1.23. Three of these are based on absorption
features in the mid-UV, while the lowest redshift object shows the standard
features near 4000\AA. Many of the objects still without redshifts have been
observed spectroscopically, and no emission lines were seen in their spectra.
We believe they are galaxies with z∼1−1.5 that are red due to their
age and stellar content and not to some large amount of internal reddening from
dust.
Among the many other results from this survey of interest here is a
determination of the median extinction in the mid-UV for objects with strong
emission line spectra at z∼1−1.3. The result is extinction by a factor
of ∼2 at 2400\AA.Comment: 6 pages, Latex, with 2 figures. To be published in the proceedings of
the conference "Infrared Surveys: A Prelude to SIRTF