We present Hubble Space Telescope images of 11 high redshift radio galaxies
(between z=2.3 and z=3.6). The galaxies were observed with the WFPC2 camera
in a broad band filter (F606W or F707W, roughly equivalent to V or R-band), for
2 orbits each. We find that on the scale of the HST observations there is a
wide variety of morphological structures of the hosting galaxies: most objects
have a clumpy, irregular appearance, consisting of a bright nucleus and a
number of smaller components, suggestive of merging systems. Some observed
structures could be due (at least partly) to the presence of dust distributed
through the galaxies. The UV continuum emission is generally elongated and
aligned with the axis of the radio sources, however the characteristics of the
``alignment effect'' differ from case to case, suggesting that the phenomenon
cannot be explained by a single physical mechanism. We compare the properties
of our radio galaxies with those of the
UV dropout galaxies and conclude that (i) the most massive radio galaxies may
well evolve from an aggregate of UV dropout galaxies and (ii) high redshift
radio galaxies probably evolve into present day brightest cluster galaxies.Comment: 22 pages, 30 figures, accepted by A&
