number	arXiv:0802.0671
Title	The Wyoming Survey for H-alpha. I. Initial Results at z ~ 0.16 and 0.24
Author(s)	Dale, Daniel A ; Barlow, Rebecca J ; Cohen, Seth A ; Johnson, L Clifton ; Kattner, ShiAnne M ; Lamanna, Christine A ; Moore, Carolynn A ; Schuster, Micah D ; Thatcher, Jacob W
Imprint	06 Feb 2008. - mult. p.
Note	Comments: To appear in the Astronomical Journal
Subject category	astro-ph
Abstract	The Wyoming Survey for H-alpha, or WySH, is a large-area, ground-based, narrowband imaging survey for H-alpha-emitting galaxies over the latter half of the age of the Universe. The survey spans several square degrees in a set of fields of low Galactic cirrus emission. The observing program focuses on multiple dz~0.02 epochs from z~0.16 to z~0.81 down to a uniform (continuum+line) luminosity at each epoch of ~10^33 W uncorrected for extinction (3sigma for a 3" diameter aperture). First results are presented here for 98+208 galaxies observed over approximately 2 square degrees at redshifts z~0.16 and 0.24, including preliminary luminosity functions at these two epochs. These data clearly show an evolution with lookback time in the volume-averaged cosmic star formation rate. Integrals of Schechter fits to the extinction-corrected H-alpha luminosity functions indicate star formation rates per co-moving volume of 0.009 and 0.014 h_70 M_sun/yr/Mpc^3 at z~0.16 and 0.24, respectively. The formal uncertainties in the Schechter fits, based on this initial subset of the survey, correspond to uncertainties in the cosmic star formation rate density at the >~40% level; the tentative uncertainty due to cosmic variance is 25%, estimated from separately carrying out the analysis on data from the first two fields with substantial datasets.
Other source	Inspire

 

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 Record created 2008-02-06, last modified 2010-04-13