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T. Hickey, C. Gronwall, R. Ciardullo (PSU), J. Feldmeier (NOAO), E. Gawiser, D. Herrera (Yale), MUSYC Collaboration
In the last few years, narrow-band surveys for Ly\alpha emitters have become extremely successful, and a substantial number of such objects have been detected between z = 2.4 and z = 6.5. Such surveys are important, since they sample the faint end of the galaxy luminosity function that is inaccessible to the Lyman-break technique. Moreover, since Ly\alpha emitters tend to be younger and less chemically enriched than their Lyman-break counterparts, they present us with an opportunity to study galaxies in the act of formation.
We have used the MOSAIC CCD camera on the CTIO 4-m telescope to perform an extremely deep (~20 hour) narrow-band survey for z = 3.1 Ly\alpha emitters centered on the Chandra Deep Field South / GOODS-S field. This survey has yielded ~200 new Ly\alpha emitters in a 0.37~deg2 region, with ~40 of these falling within the region surveyed by GOODS. We will present the luminosity function of these objects and discuss implications for the star formation history of the universe. We will also discuss the morphological properties of those objects falling within the GOODS region using archival HST/ACS images.
This work was supported by NSF grants 00-71238 and 01-37927 and HST-AR 10324.01A. JF and EG acknowledge the support of NSF Astronomy & Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowships.
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: caryl@astro.psu.edu
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 36 5
© 2004. The American Astronomical Society.