Search

The study of the physical properties of high-redshift galaxies has become one of the major goals of extragalactic astronomy. In particular the massassembly histories of galaxies have been the focus of many studies at redshifts 1 to 3. In the purpose of probing the dynamics of intermediate and high-redshift galaxies, we have designed a research program to carry out a near-infrared spectroscopic follow up of spatially resolved distant galaxies. Here, we present the results for A370-A5 (z=1.341), an arc behind the lens cluster Abell 370 (z=0.374), observed in the case of science verification programme of SINFONI/VLT. The natural magni fication due to massive galaxy clusters allows to spatially resolve and constrain the dynamics of young star forming galaxies 1 to 3 magnitudes fainter than those selected in blank fields. Thus, the study of lensed galaxies allows to probe a low mass regime of galaxies not accessible in standard observation. In this particular case, we found that the gas distribution and kinematics are consistent with a bipolar outflow with a range of velocities of v ~ 100km/s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the host galaxies (HGs) of quasars is the key to linking the evolution of galaxies and their central black holes. Within the gems project we are studying quasar HGs and their morphologies, luminosities, ages and environment up to redshift z ~ 3. gems - Galaxy Evolution from Morphologies and SEDs - is a large, two-filter (F606W, F850LP) imaging survey with the HST ACS, centered on the Chandra Deep Field South. For ~ 8 000 galaxies and ~ 130 AGN photometric redshifts are available in this field from the combo-17 project (Wolf et al., 2003, A&A, 401, 73). Full gems overview by Rix et al. (these proceedings). For the initial study we defined two quasar samples with 0.5 < z < 1.1 and 1.8 < z < 2.75 (‘low' and ‘high', 16 and 22 quasars, respectively), complete down to a flux limit of R = 24 and representing intermediately luminous AGN. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]