Abstract
We present a catalog of spectrophotometric redshifts for 1308 galaxies from the Grism ACS Program for Extragalactic Science (GRAPES) observations with the Hubble Space Telescope. These low-resolution spectra between 6000 Å and 9500 Å are supplemented with U, J, H, and Ks data from various facilities, resulting in redshifts computed with ~40 spectral bins per galaxy. For 75 galaxies in the range 0.5 < z < 1.5 with spectroscopic redshifts, the standard deviation in the fractional error in 1 + z is 0.037. With this catalog, we compute the B-band luminosity function in this redshift range from 72 galaxies. Due to the depth of the GRAPES survey, we are able to accurately constrain the faint-end slope by going to MB ≃ -18 mag at z = 1.0 ± 0.2, nearly 2 mag fainter than previous studies. The faint-end slope is α = -1.32 ± 0.07. When compared to numerous published values at various redshifts, we find strong evidence for a steepening of the faint-end slope with redshift, which is expected in the hierarchical formation scenario of galaxies.
Export citation and abstract BibTeX RIS
Footnotes
- *
Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the Data Archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-26555.