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D. Schaerer (Geneva Observatory), R. Pello (Observatoire Midi-Pyrenees)
We report the first results obtained from our ultra-deep near-IR survey with ISAAC/VLT, aimed at the detection of high-z galaxies using lensing clusters as natural Gravitational Telescopes.
Our evolutionary synthesis models of PopIII and extremely metal-poor starburst (Schaerer 2002, 2003) have been used to derive observational properties expected for the first galaxies, such as expected magnitudes and colors, line fluxes for the main emission lines etc. These models have allowed us to define fairly robust selection criteria to find z ~ 7--10 galaxies based on broad-band near-IR photometry in combination with the traditional Lyman drop-out technique. The magnification in the core of lensing clusters improves the search efficiency and subsequent spectroscopic studies.
The first results from a survey of two lensing clusters is presented. Several z ~ 8-10 galaxy candidates have been found satifying our photometric criteria. Their properties are discussed. The number of candidates found using the Gravitational Telescope is compared to the one achieved in blank fields with similar photometric depth in the near-IR. The different number density results are compared to expectations, using a simple modeling scheme to estimate the number counts in cluster and blanck fields.
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The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: daniel.schaerer@obs.unige.ch
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 35#5
© 2003. The American Astronomical Soceity.