Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Dec 1994
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1994apj...436..551y&link_type=abstract
Astrophysical Journal, Part 1 (ISSN 0004-637X), vol. 436, no. 2, p. 551-558
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
21
Absorption Spectra, Astronomical Models, Cosmology, H I Regions, Lyman Alpha Radiation, Molecular Clouds, Quasars, Stellar Spectra, Astronomical Photometry, Mathematical Models, Ultraviolet Astronomy
Scientific paper
Intergalactic H I clouds that produce the Ly-alpha absorption lines in QSO spectra with rest-frame equivalent widths greater than about 0.5 A accumulate along the line of sight to be optically thick at wavelengths below the Lyman limit due to Lyman continuum absorption. Because the number of clouds along the line of sight increases rapidly with redshift, the cumulative effect of Lyman line absorption will also extinguish the spectra of source objects with a redshift of zs greater than 5.5 that are observed at wavelenghts below lambda approximately 8000 A before the Lyman limit eventually enters this wavelength region at zs approximately 8. The intergalactic absorption places a definite upper bound on observable redshift of zs approximately = 5.5, above which no objects can be probed in optical surveys, either by spectroscopy or by I-band photometry. A question of whether galaxies would form at much earlier epoches can be answered only by searches at longer wavelengths where the intergalactic absorption is less.
Peterson Bruce A.
Yoshii Yuzuru
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