The Wide Field Imager Lyman-Alpha Search (WFILAS) for galaxies at redshift 65.7: I. A spatially compact Lya emitting galaxy at redshift 5.721

We report the spectroscopic confirmation of a compact Lya emitting galaxy at z = 5.721. A FORS2 spectrum of the source shows a strong asymmetric line with a flux of 5 x 10-17 erg s-1 cm-2, making it one of the brightest Lya emitting galaxies at this redshift, and a line-of-sight velocity dispersion...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Astronomy and astrophysics (Berlin) 2005-02, Vol.430 (2), p.L21-L24
Main Authors: Westra, E, Jones, D H, Lidman, C E, Athreya, R M, Meisenheimer, K, Wolf, C, Szeifert, T, Pompei, E, Vanzi, L
Format: Article
Language:English
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:We report the spectroscopic confirmation of a compact Lya emitting galaxy at z = 5.721. A FORS2 spectrum of the source shows a strong asymmetric line with a flux of 5 x 10-17 erg s-1 cm-2, making it one of the brightest Lya emitting galaxies at this redshift, and a line-of-sight velocity dispersion of 400 km s-1. We also have a tentative detection of a second, narrower component that is redshifted by 400 km s-1 with respect to the main peak. A FORS2 image shows that the source is compact, with a FWHM of 0".5, which corresponds to 3.2 kpc at this redshift**. This source is a brighter example of J1236.8+6215 (Dawson et al. 2002, ApJ, 570, 92), another Lya emitting galaxy at z 6 5.2.
ISSN:0004-6361
DOI:10.1051/0004-6361:200400126