Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

The Morphology Of Passively Evolving Galaxies At Z ~ 2 From Hst/Wfc3 Deep Imagin In The Hubble Ultradeep Field, P Cassata, M Giavalisco, Yc Guo, H Ferguson, Am Koekemoer, A Renzini, A Fontana, S Salimbeni, M Dickinson, S Casertano, Cj Conselice, N Grogin, Jm Lotz, C Papovich, Ra Lucas, A Straughn, Jp Gardner, L Moustakas

Astronomy Department Faculty Publication Series

We present near–IR images, obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and the WFC3/IR camera, of six passive and massive galaxies at redshift 1.3 < z < 2.4 (SSFR< 10⁻² Gyr⁻¹; stellar mass M ∼ 1011 M_⊙), selected from the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey (GOODS). These images, which have a spatial resolution of ∼ 1.5 kpc, provide the deepest view of the optical rest–frame morphology of such systems to date. We find that the light profile of these galaxies is regular and well described by a Sérsic model with index typical of today’s spheroids. Their size, however, …