Spectrophotometric properties of galaxies at intermediate redshifts (z ~ 0.2–1.0) - I. Sample description, photometric properties and spectral measurements

Free access article

Issue		A&A Volume 448, Number 3, March IV 2006


Page(s)		893 - 906
Section		Extragalactic astronomy
DOI		http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361:20053601

A&A 448, 893-906 (2006)
DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361:20053601

Spectrophotometric properties of galaxies at intermediate redshifts (z ~ 0.2-1.0)

I. Sample description, photometric properties and spectral measurements

F. Lamareille¹, T. Contini¹, J.-F. Le Borgne¹, J. Brinchmann^{2, 3}, S. Charlot^{2, 4} and J. Richard¹

¹ Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Toulouse et Tarbes (LATT - UMR 5572), Observatoire Midi-Pyrénées, 14 avenue E. Belin, 31400 Toulouse, France
e-mail: flamare@ast.obs-mip.fr
² Max-Planck Institut für Astrophysik, Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 1 Postfach 1317, 85741 Garching, Germany
³ Centro de Astrofísica da Universidade do Porto, Rua das Estrelas, 4150-762 Porto, Portugal
⁴ Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, CNRS, 98 bis boulevard Arago, 75014 Paris, France

(Received 9 June 2005 / Accepted 29 October 2005 )

Abstract
We present the spectrophotometric properties of a sample of 141 emission-line galaxies at redshifts in the range 0.2<z<1.0 with a peak around $z\in[0.2,0.4]$ . The analysis is based on medium resolution ( $R_{{\rm s}}=500{-}600$ ), optical spectra obtained at VLT and Keck. The targets are mostly "Canada-France Redshift Survey" emission-line galaxies, with the addition of field galaxies randomly selected behind lensing clusters. We complement this sample with galaxy spectra from the "Gemini Deep Deep Survey" public data release. We have computed absolute magnitudes of the galaxies and measured the line fluxes and equivalent widths of the main emission/absorption lines. The last two have been measured after careful subtraction of the fitted stellar continuum using the platefit software originally developed for the SDSS and adapted to our data. We present a careful comparison of this software with the results of manual measurements. The pipeline has also been tested on lower resolution spectra, typical of the "VIMOS/VLT Deep Survey" ( $R_{{\rm s}}=250$ ), by resampling our medium resolution spectra. We show that we can successfully deblend the most important strong emission lines. These data are primarily used to perform a spectral classification of the galaxies in order to distinguish star-forming galaxies from AGNs. Among the initial sample of 141 emission-line galaxies, we find 7 Seyfert 2 (narrow-line AGN), 115 star-forming galaxies and 16 "candidate" star-forming galaxies. Scientific analysis of these data, in terms of chemical abundances, stellar populations, etc., will be presented in subsequent papers of this serie.

Key words: galaxies: abundances -- galaxies: evolution -- galaxies: fundamental parameters -- galaxies: starburst

SIMBAD Objects
Tables at the CDS

What is OpenURL?

The OpenURL standard is a protocol for transmission of metadata describing the resource that you wish to access. An OpenURL link contains article metadata and directs it to the OpenURL server of your choice. The OpenURL server can provide access to the resource and also offer complementary services (specific search engine, export of references...). The OpenURL link can be generated by different means.

If your librarian has set up your subscription with an OpenURL resolver, OpenURL links appear automatically on the abstract pages.
You can define your own OpenURL resolver with your EDPS Account. In this case your choice will be given priority over that of your library.
You can use an add-on for your browser (Firefox or I.E.) to display OpenURL links on a page (see http://www.openly.com/openurlref/). You should disable this module if you wish to use the OpenURL server that you or your library have defined.