Bibcode
Buitrago, F.; Conselice, C. J.; Epinat, B.; Bedregal, A. G.; Trujillo, I.; Grützbauch, R.
Referencia bibliográfica
Highlights of Spanish Astrophysics VI, Proceedings of the IX Scientific Meeting of the Spanish Astronomical Society (SEA), held in Madrid, September 13 - 17, 2010, Eds.: M. R. Zapatero Osorio, J. Gorgas, J. Maíz Apellániz, J. R. Pardo, and A. Gil de Paz., p. 154-160
Fecha de publicación:
11
2011
Número de citas
0
Número de citas referidas
0
Descripción
Massive (M_* ≥ 10^{11} M_&sun;) galaxies at high redshift (z ≥
1.5) remain mysterious objects. Their extremely small sizes (effective
radii of 1-2 kpc) make them as dense as modern globular clusters. It is
thought that a highly dissipational merger is needed to create such
compact galaxies. Within this proceedings, we discuss this issue, along
with state-of-the-art morphological and kinematic observations of these
objects. In the present day Universe massive galaxies contain large
sizes, and harbour old and metal-rich stellar populations. In order to
explore their development, we present near-IR IFU observations with
SINFONI@VLT for ten massive galaxies at z ˜ 1.4 solely selected by
their high stellar mass which allows us to retrieve velocity
dispersions, kinematic maps and dynamical masses. We combine this with
data from the GOODS NICMOS Survey, the largest sample of massive
galaxies (80 objects) with high-resolution imaging at high redshift (1.7
< z < 3) acquired to date. As a result, we show how massive galaxy
morphology changes possibly result through elusive minor merging.