HST WFC3 Early Release Science: Emission-line Galaxies from IR Grism Observations

Details HST WFC3 Early Release Science: Emission-line Galaxies from IR Grism Observations HST WFC3 Early Release Science: Emission-line Galaxies from IR Grism Observations

Jan 2011

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011aas...21733519s&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #217, #335.19; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 43, 2011

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Scientific paper

The Early Release Science II program for HST WFC3 includes one pointing observed with the G102 (0.8-1.1 microns; R 210) and G141 (1.1-1.6 microns; R 130) infrared grisms at a depth of 2 orbits/grism. From this data we detect 48 actively star-forming emission-line galaxies and measure the galaxies' redshifts, line fluxes, star-formation rates, and masses. In particular, the prominent emission lines Ha, [OII], and [OIII] fall into the two infrared grism bandpasses over a redshift range z=0.2-3.6, and the majority of galaxies have at least two lines in the observable wavelength range resulting in secure line identification and redshift determination. We detect galaxies with line fluxes to 3 x 10-17 erg/s/cm2 as well as several sources with very high EW lines. The higher spectral resolution and sensitivity of the WFC3 grisms over previous instrumentation also allows detection of other emission lines in some galaxies. The average magnitude of the emission-line galaxy sample is mAB(F098M)=23.6 mag with more than 20% of the sample fainter than mAB(F098M)=25 mag, demonstrating the remarkable efficiency and capability of the WFC3 NIR grisms for measuring galaxy properties to faint magnitudes and intermediate redshifts. Our results point to the promising potential for future science with WFC3 grism spectroscopy, as well as upcoming missions such as JWST and WFIRST. This paper is based on Early Release Science observations made by the WFC3 Scientific Oversight Committee. We are grateful to the Director of the Space Telescope Science Institute for awarding Director's Discretionary time for this program. This research was supported in part by an appointment to the NASA Postdoctoral Program at Goddard Space Flight Center, administered by Oak Ridge Associated Universities through a contract with NASA (ANS).

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