Publication
Title
Hunting for the building blocks of galaxies like our own milky way with FORS
Author
Abstract
We report results from our ultra-deep spectroscopic survey for low surface brightness Ly alpha emitters at redshift z ~ 3. A 92-hour-long exposure with the ESO VLT FORS2 instrument has yielded a sample of 27 faint line emitters with fluxes of a few times 10-18 erg s-1 cm-2 which we argue are likely to be dominated by Ly alpha. The large comoving number density, the large covering factor, dN/dz ~ 0.2-1, and the spatially extended surface brightness of the emission suggest that the emitters can be identified with the elusive host population of damped Ly alpha systems (DLAS) and high column density Lyman limit systems. The finding suggests that most Lyman limit systems and DLAS are part of the same low-mass galaxies.
Language
English
Source (journal)
Messenger = Mensajero / European Southern Observatory. - München, 1976
Publication
München : 2008
ISSN
0722-6691
Volume/pages
132 (2008) , p. 41-45
UAntwerpen
Faculty/Department
Research group
Publication type
Subject
Affiliation
Publications with a UAntwerp address
External links
Record
Identifier
Creation 07.04.2011
Last edited 07.10.2022
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