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Redshifts Z (redshift + z)
Selected AbstractsLuminous red galaxy clustering at z, 0.7 , first results using AAOmegaMONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY, Issue 3 2008Nicholas P. Ross ABSTRACT We report on the AAT-AAOmega LRG Pilot observing run to establish the feasibility of a large spectroscopic survey using the new AAOmega instrument. We have selected luminous red galaxies (LRGs) using single epoch SDSS riz -photometry to i < 20.5 and z < 20.2. We have observed in three fields including the COSMOS field and the COMBO-17 S11 field, obtaining a sample of ,600 redshift z, 0.5 LRGs. Exposure times varied from 1,4 h to determine the minimum exposure for AAOmega to make an essentially complete LRG redshift survey in average conditions. We show that LRG redshifts to i < 20.5 can be measured in ,1.5 h exposures and present comparisons with 2SLAQ and COMBO-17 (photo)redshifts. Crucially, the riz selection coupled with the three to four times improved AAOmega throughput is shown to extend the LRG mean redshift from z= 0.55 for 2SLAQ to z= 0.681 ± 0.005 for riz -selected LRGs. This extended range is vital for maximizing the signal-to-noise ratio for the detection of the baryon acoustic oscillations (BAOs). Furthermore, we show that the amplitude of LRG clustering is s0= 9.9 ± 0.7h,1 Mpc, as high as that seen in the 2SLAQ LRG Survey. Consistent results for this clustering amplitude are found from the projected and semi-projected correlation functions. This high amplitude is consistent with a long-lived population whose bias evolves as predicted by a simple ,high-peak' model. We conclude that a redshift survey of 360 000 LRGs over 3000 deg2, with an effective volume some four times bigger than previously used to detect BAO with LRGs, is possible with AAOmega in 170 nights. [source] Deep spectroscopy of distant 3CR radio galaxies: the dataMONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY, Issue 1 2000P. N. Best Deep long-slit spectroscopic data are presented for a sample of 14 3CR radio galaxies at redshift z,1, previously studied in detail using the Hubble Space Telescope, the Very Large Array, and the UK Infrared Telescope (UKIRT). Analysis of the [O ii] 3727 emission-line structures at ,5 Å spectral resolution is carried out to derive the kinematic properties of the emission-line gas. In line with previous lower resolution studies, a wide variety of kinematics are seen, from gas consistent with a mean rotational motion through to complex structures with velocity dispersions exceeding 1000 km s ,1. The data confirm the presence of a high-velocity gas component in 3C 265 and detached emission-line systems in 3C 356 and 3C 441, and show for the first time that the emission-line gas in the central regions of 3C 324 is composed of two kinematically distinct components. Emission-line fluxes and the colour of the continuum emission are determined down to unprecedentedly low observed wavelengths, ,<3500 Å, sufficiently short that any contribution of an evolved stellar population is negligible. An accompanying paper investigates the variation in the emission-line ratios and velocity structures within the sample, and draws conclusions as to the origin of the ionization and kinematics of these galaxies. [source] Dust-enshrouded star formation in XMM-LSS galaxy clustersASTRONOMISCHE NACHRICHTEN, Issue 9-10 2009S. Temporin Abstract In recent years, infrared studies of individual galaxy clusters at intermediate redshifts led to the identification of several luminous infrared galaxies (LIR > 1011 L,). These findings were interpreted as an evidence ofvigorous, dust-enshrouded star formation activity, hinting at the presence of an infrared Butcher-Oemler effect. In order to explore this effect, we have undertaken a statistical investigation based on a cluster sample drawn from the XMM-Newton Large Scale Structure survey (XMM-LSS) and exploiting the contiguous coverage of the XMM-LSS field by the Spitzer SWIRE legacy survey. We adopted a stacking technique to investigate the distribution of 24- , m sources out to the cluster periphery and compare it with the distribution of sources in a sample of control fields. Among putative cluster members, selected by means of photometric redshifts, we identified surprisingly high numbers of bright 24- , m sources toward intermediate redshift clusters (z > 0.3). Our analysis indicates the presence of an excess of bright mid-IR sources at redshift z > 0.3 at clustercentric radii ,200,500 kpc (© 2009 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim) [source] The evolution of cluster early-type galaxies over the past 8 GyrASTRONOMISCHE NACHRICHTEN, Issue 9-10 2009A. Fritz Abstract We present the Fundamental Plane (FP) of early-type galaxies in the clusters of galaxies RXJ1415.1+3612 at z = 1.013. This is the first detailed FP investigation of cluster early-type galaxies at redshift z = 1. The distant cluster galaxies follow a steeper FP relation compared to the local FP. The change in the slope of the FP can be interpreted as a massdependent evolution. To analyse in more detail the galaxy population in high redshift galaxy clusters at 0.8 < z < 1, we combine our sample with a previous detailed spectroscopic study of 38 early-type galaxies in two distant galaxy clusters, RXJ0152.7,1357 at z = 0.83 and RXJ1226.9+3332 at z = 0.89. For all clusters Gemini/GMOS spectroscopy with high signal-to-noise and intermediate-resolution has been acquired to measure the internal kinematics and stellar populations of the galaxies. From HST/ACS imaging, surface brightness profiles, morphologies and structural parameters were derived for the galaxy sample. The least massive galaxies (M = 2 x 1010 M,) in our sample have experienced their most recent major star formation burst at zform , 1.1. For massive galaxies (M > 2 x 1011 M,) the bulk of their stellar populations have been formed earlier zform , 1.6. Our results confirm previous findings by Jørgensen et al. This suggests that the less massive galaxies in the distant clusters have much younger stellar populations than their more massive counterparts. One explanation is that low-mass cluster galaxies have experienced more extended star formation histories with more frequent bursts of star formation with shorter duration compared to the formation history of high-mass cluster galaxies (© 2009 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim) [source] Primordial magnetic fields and CMB anisotropiesASTRONOMISCHE NACHRICHTEN, Issue 5-6 2006K. Subramanian Abstract Possible signatures of primordial magnetic fields on the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) temperature and polarization anisotropies are reviewed. The signals that could be searched for include excess temperature anisotropies particularly at small angular scales below the Silk damping scale, B-mode polarization, and non-Gaussian statistics. A field at a few nG level produces temperature anisotropies at the 5 µK level, and B-mode polarization anisotropies 10 times smaller, and is therefore potentially detectable via the CMB anisotropies. An even smaller field, with B0 < 0.1 nG, could lead to structure formation at high redshift z > 15, and hence naturally explain an early re-ionization of the Universe. (© 2006 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim) [source] Ly, leaks and reionizationMONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY, Issue 4 2008Longlong Feng ABSTRACT Ly, absorption spectra of QSOs at redshifts z, 6 show complete Gunn,Peterson absorption troughs (dark gaps) separated by tiny leaks. The dark gaps are from the intergalactic medium (IGM) where the density of neutral hydrogen are high enough to produce almost saturated absorptions, however, where the transmitted leaks come from is still unclear so far. We demonstrate that leaking can originate from the lowest density voids in the IGM as well as the ionized apatches around ionizing sources using semi-analytical simulations. If leaks are produced in lowest density voids, the IGM must already be highly ionized, and the ionizing background should be almost uniform; in contrast, if leaks come from ionized patches, the neutral fraction of IGM should be still high, and the ionizing background is significantly inhomogeneous. Therefore, the origin of leaking is crucial to determining the epoch of inhomogeneous-to-uniform transition of the ionizing photon background. We show that the origin could be studied with the statistical features of leaks. Actually, Ly, leaks can be well defined and described by the equivalent width W and the full width of half-area WH, both of which are less contaminated by instrumental resolution and noise. It is found that the distributions of W and WH of Ly, leaks are sensitive to the modelling of the ionizing background. We consider four representative models: uniform ionizing background (model 0), the photoionization rate of neutral hydrogen ,H i and the density of IGM are either linearly correlated (model I), or anticorrelated (model II), and ,H i is correlated with high-density peaks containing ionizing sources (model III). Although all of these models can match to the mean of the observed effective optical depth of the IGM at z, 6, the distributions of W and WH are very different from each other. Consequently, the leak statistics provides an effective tool to probe the evolutionary history of reionization at z, 5,6.5. Similar statistics will also be applicable to the reionization of He ii at z, 3 [source] The kinematical structure of gravitationally lensed arcsMONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY, Issue 2 2006Ole Möller ABSTRACT In this paper, the expected properties of the velocity fields of strongly lensed arcs behind galaxy clusters are investigated. The velocity profile along typical lensed arcs is determined by ray-tracing light rays from a model source galaxy through parametric cluster toy models consisting of individual galaxies embedded in a dark cluster halo. We find that strongly lensed arcs of high-redshift galaxies show complex velocity structures that are sensitive to the details of the mass distribution within the cluster, in particular at small scales. From fits to the simulated imaging and kinematic data, we demonstrate that reconstruction of the source velocity field is in principle feasible. Two-dimensional kinematic information obtained with integral field units on large ground-based telescopes in combination with adaptive optics will allow the reconstruction of rotation curves of lensed high redshift galaxies. This makes it possible to determine the mass-to-light ratios of galaxies at redshifts z > 1 out to about 2,3 scalelengths with better than ,20 per cent accuracy. We also discuss the possibilities of using two-dimensional kinematic information along the arcs to give additional constraints on the cluster lens mass models. [source] Forming supermassive black holes by accreting dark and baryon matterMONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY, Issue 1 2006Jian Hu ABSTRACT Given a large-scale mixture of self-interacting dark matter (SIDM) particles and baryon matter distributed in the early Universe, we advance here a two-phase accretion scenario for forming supermassive black holes (SMBHs) with masses around ,109 M, at high redshifts z(,6). The first phase is conceived to involve a rapid quasi-spherical and quasi-steady Bondi accretion of mainly SIDM particles embedded with baryon matter on to seed black holes (BHs) created at redshifts z, 30 by the first generation of massive Population III stars; this earlier phase rapidly gives birth to significantly enlarged seed BH masses of during z, 20,15, where ,0 is the cross-section per unit mass of SIDM particles and Cs is the velocity dispersion in the SIDM halo referred to as an effective ,sound speed'. The second phase of BH mass growth is envisaged to proceed primarily via baryon accretion, eventually leading to SMBH masses of MBH, 109 M,; such SMBHs may form either by z, 6 for a sustained accretion at the Eddington limit or later at lower z for sub-Eddington mean accretion rates. In between these two phases, there is a transitional yet sustained diffusively limited accretion of SIDM particles which in an eventual steady state would be much lower than the accretion rates of the two main phases. We intend to account for the reported detections of a few SMBHs at early epochs, e.g. Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) 1148+5251 and so forth, without necessarily resorting to either super-Eddington baryon accretion or very frequent BH merging processes. Only extremely massive dark SIDM haloes associated with rare peaks of density fluctuations in the early Universe may harbour such early SMBHs or quasars. Observational consequences are discussed. During the final stage of accumulating a SMBH mass, violent feedback in circumnuclear environs of a galactic nucleus leads to the central bulge formation and gives rise to the familiar empirical MBH,,b correlation inferred for nearby normal galaxies with ,b being the stellar velocity dispersion in the galactic bulge; in our scenario, the central SMBH formation precedes that of the galactic bulge. [source] The ROSAT Brightest Cluster Sample , IV.MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY, Issue 2 2000The extended sample We present a low-flux extension of the X-ray-selected ROSAT Brightest Cluster Sample (BCS) published in Paper I of this series. Like the original BCS and employing an identical selection procedure, the BCS extension is compiled from ROSAT All-Sky Survey (RASS) data in the northern hemisphere (,,0°) and at high Galactic latitudes (|b|,20°). It comprises 99 X-ray-selected clusters of galaxies with measured redshifts z,0.3 (as well as eight more at z>0.3) and total fluxes between 2.8×10,12 and 4.4×10,12 erg cm,2 s,1 in the 0.1,2.4 keV band (the latter value being the flux limit of the original BCS). The extension can be combined with the main sample published in 1998 to form the homogeneously selected extended BCS (eBCS), the largest and statistically best understood cluster sample to emerge from the RASS to date. The nominal completeness of the combined sample (defined with respect to a power-law fit to the bright end of the BCS log N,log S distribution) is relatively low at 75 per cent (compared with 90 per cent for the high-flux sample of Paper I). However, just as for the original BCS, this incompleteness can be accurately quantified, and thus statistically corrected for, as a function of X-ray luminosity and redshift. In addition to its importance for improved statistical studies of the properties of clusters in the local Universe, the low-flux extension of the BCS is also intended to serve as a finding list for X-ray-bright clusters in the northern hemisphere which we hope will prove useful in the preparation of cluster observations with the next generation of X-ray telescopes such as Chandra and XMM-Newton. An electronic version of the eBCS can be obtained from the following URL: http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/~ebeling/clusters/BCS.html. [source] Ionization, shocks and evolution of the emission-line gas of distant 3CR radio galaxiesMONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY, Issue 1 2000P. N. Best An analysis of the kinematics and ionization state of the emission-line gas of a sample of 14 3CR radio galaxies with redshifts z,1 is carried out. The data used for these studies, deep long-slit spectroscopic exposures from the William Herschel Telescope, are presented in an accompanying paper. It is found that radio sources with small linear sizes (,150 kpc) have lower ionization states, higher emission-line fluxes and broader line widths than larger radio sources. An analysis of the low-redshift sample of Baum et al. demonstrates that radio galaxies at low redshift show similar evolution in their velocity structures and emission-line ratios from small to large radio sources. The emission-line ratios of small radio sources are in agreement with theoretical shock ionization predictions, and their velocity profiles are distorted. Together with the other emission-line properties, this indicates that shocks associated with the radio source dominate the kinematics and ionization of the emission-line gas during the period that the radio source is expanding through the interstellar medium. Gas clouds are accelerated by the shocks, giving rise to the irregular velocity structures observed, whilst shock compression of emission-line gas clouds and the presence of the ionizing photons associated with the shocks combine to lower the ionization state of the emission-line gas. By contrast, in larger sources the shock fronts have passed well beyond the emission-line regions; the emission-line gas of these larger radio sources has much more settled kinematical properties, indicative of rotation, and emission-line ratios consistent with the dominant source of ionizing photons being the active galactic nucleus. This strong evolution with radio size of the emission-line gas properties of powerful radio galaxies mirrors the radio size evolution seen in the nature of the optical,ultraviolet continuum emission of these sources, implying that the continuum alignment effect is likely to be related to the same radio source shocks. [source] Masses of distant radio galaxies: A coherent view for evolution and originASTRONOMISCHE NACHRICHTEN, Issue 2-3 2006B. Rocca-VolmerangeArticle first published online: 3 FEB 200 Abstract We hereafter aim to present mass estimates and main parameters of distant powerful radio sources, respectively for evolved stars, ionized gas, and dust. Observations and models are consistent with a scenario where large masses are accumulated whithin extremely short time scales < 1 Gyr at redshifts z > 2: a strong constraint for large-scale structure models. (© 2006 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim) [source] Galaxy,galaxy lensing by non-spherical haloes , I. Theoretical considerationsMONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY, Issue 2 2010Paul J. Howell ABSTRACT We use a series of Monte Carlo simulations to investigate the theory of galaxy,galaxy lensing by non-spherical dark matter haloes. The simulations include a careful accounting of the effects of multiple deflections on the galaxy,galaxy lensing signal. In a typical observational data set where the mean tangential shear of sources with redshifts zs, 0.6 is measured with respect to the observed symmetry axes of foreground galaxies with redshifts zl, 0.3, we find that the signature of anisotropic galaxy,galaxy lensing differs substantially from the simple expectation that one would have in the absence of multiple deflections. In general, the observed ratio of the mean tangential shears, ,+(,)/,,(,), is strongly suppressed compared to the function that one would measure if the intrinsic symmetry axes of the foreground galaxies were known. Depending upon the characteristic masses of the lenses, the observed ratio of the mean tangential shears may be consistent with an isotropic signal (despite the fact that the lenses are non-spherical), or it may even be reversed from the expected signal (i.e. the mean tangential shear for sources close to the observed minor axes of the lenses may exceed the mean tangential shear for sources close to the observed major axes of the lenses). These effects are caused primarily by the fact that the images of the lens galaxies have, themselves, been lensed and therefore the observed symmetry axes of the lens galaxies differ from their intrinsic symmetry axes. We show that the effects of lensing of the foreground galaxies on the observed function ,+(,)/,,(,) cannot be eliminated simply by the rejection of foreground galaxies with very small image ellipticities nor by simply focusing the analysis on sources that are located very close to the observed symmetry axes of the foreground galaxies. We conclude that any attempt to use a measurement of ,+(,)/,,(,) to constrain the shapes of dark matter galaxy haloes must include Monte Carlo simulations that take multiple deflections properly into account. [source] | ||||||||||