The SINS Survey: Rotation Curves and Dynamical Evolution of Distant Galaxies with SINFONI

Details The SINS Survey: Rotation Curves and Dynamical Evolution of Distant Galaxies with SINFONI The SINS Survey: Rotation Curves and Dynamical Evolution of Distant Galaxies with SINFONI

Sep 2006

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006msngr.125...11f&link_type=abstract

The Messenger, volume 125, page 11

Physics

Optics

6

Scientific paper

It has become clear in recent years that about half of the stellar mass in galaxies was put in place by redshift z ~ 1, when the Universe was 40% of its current age. However, the details of how the mass was assembled and what physical processes were involved at early stages of galaxy evolution remain unclear. Progress has been hampered by the lack of detailed spatially-resolved studies of galaxies beyond z ~ 1. This has now become possible with SINFONI, the adaptive optics-assisted near-infrared integral field spectrometer at the VLT. Here we report on our SINFONI observations of massive star-forming galaxies at z ~ 2-3. The data enabled us to investigate their morphologies and kinematics on typical spatial scales of 4-5 kpc. The most surprising outcome is that a majority of these galaxies appear to be large, rotating, and often gas-rich discs. Even more compelling evidence is provided by the exceptionally detailed SINFONI data of a z ~ 2 galaxy observed with adaptive optics, resulting in a spatial resolution of 1.2 kpc, and of a highly magnified z ~ 3 galaxy for which the gravitational lensing of a foreground galaxy cluster acts as a microscope, revealing the dynamics on scales as small as 200 pc.

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