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S. Castro, S.G. Djorgovski, R. Brunner, A. Mahabal, R.R. Gal (Caltech), R.R. de Carvalho (ON/IAG/Brazil), DPOSS Team
We present a study of the evolution of high column density absorbers in the spectra of z > 4 quasars discovered in the DPOSS survey. These absorbers represent a population of the building blocks of galaxies. Understanding of their evolution is an important goal of modern cosmology, and their study complements surveys for distant galaxies found in emission. We present preliminary results of a spectroscopic survey of large redshift quasars obtained with the Echellette Spectrograph and Imager (ESI) at the Keck Observatory.
We acknowledge the generous support from the Norris Foundation, and other private donors. We are grateful to the staff of the Keck Observatory for their support during observations.