The nature of faint blue galaxies

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Deep CCD images in U (3600 A˚), BJ (4500 A˚), and R (6500 A˚) are used to define and analyse a population of faint, blue galaxies that approach the confusion limit at BJ=28. The average BJ-R and U-BJ colours of these galaxies become bluer as they get fainter and are only slightly redder than those of a flat spectrum source at BJ~26. The slope of the number-versus-apparent magnitude relation, measured at three different wavelengths, is indicative of relatively recent evolution in these systems. Indirect methods are used to place broad constraints on the redshift distribution of faint blue galaxies. The galaxies appear to be weakly clustered on the sky, and this suggests that they are progenitors of systems that are intrinsically faint at the present epoch. Further, field galaxy redshift surveys indicate that brighter counterparts of these galaxies (BJ<~23) are at low redshifts (z<~0.7) and are fainter than L* galaxies. The redshift surveys suggest a scenario where the faint tail of the luminosity function is evolving more rapidly than the bright end. We have applied this type of evolution to the present-day galaxy luminosity function and are able to find a reasonably good match to the BJ galaxy counts derived from our CCD data and the observed trends in the BJ-R and U-BJ colours. The uncertainties in the nature of evolution of faint blue galaxies, however, continue to compromise their usefulness as probes of the curvature of spacetime.

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