NEW RESULTS FROM THE MAGELLAN IMACS SPECTROSCOPIC Ly alpha SURVEY: NICMOS OBSERVATIONS OF Ly alpha EMITTERS AT z=5.7

Henry, Alaina L.; Martin, Crystal L.; Dressler, Alan; McCarthy, Patrick; Sawicki, Marcin
2010
ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL
DOI
10.1088/0004-637X/719/1/685
We present NICMOS J(110) (rest-frame 1200-2100 angstrom) observations of the three z = 5.7 Ly alpha emitters discovered in the blind multislit spectroscopic survey by Martin et al. These images confirm the presence of the two sources that were previously only seen in spectroscopic observations. The third source, which is undetected in our J110 observations, has been detected in narrowband imaging of the Cosmic Origins Survey, so our non-detection implies a rest-frame equivalent width > 146 angstrom (3 sigma). The two J(110)-detected sources have more modest rest-frame equivalent widths of 30-40 angstrom, but all three are typical of high-redshift Lya emitters. In addition, the J110-detected sources have UV luminosities that are within a factor of 2 of L-UV*, and sizes that appear compact (r(hl) similar to 0.'' 15) in our NIC2 images-consistent with a redshift of 5.7. We use these UV-continuum and Lya measurements to estimate the i(775)-z(850) colors of these galaxies and show that at least one and possibly all three would be missed by the i-dropout Lyman break galaxy selection. These observations help demonstrate the utility of multislit narrowband spectroscopy as a technique for finding faint emission-line galaxies.