Journal
ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL LETTERS
Volume 716, Issue 2, Pages L200-L204Publisher
IOP PUBLISHING LTD
DOI: 10.1088/2041-8205/716/2/L200
Keywords
cosmology: observations; galaxies: formation; galaxies: high-redshift; galaxies: structure
Categories
Funding
- NASA [HST-GO-11177.01, HST-AR-11253.01-A, HST-AR-10324.01, NAS 5-26555]
- National Science Foundation [AST-0807570, AST-0807885]
- Direct For Mathematical & Physical Scien
- Division Of Astronomical Sciences [0807885, 0807570] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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We present the results of a high spatial resolution study of the line emission in a sample of z = 3.1 Ly alpha-emitting galaxies (LAEs) in the Extended Chandra Deep Field-South. Of the eight objects with coverage in our HST/WFPC2 narrowband imaging, two have clear detections and two are barely detected (similar to 2 sigma). The clear detections are within similar to 0.5 kpc of the centroid of the corresponding rest-UV continuum source, suggesting that the line-emitting gas and young stars in LAEs are spatially coincident. The brightest object exhibits extended emission with a half-light radius of similar to 1.5 kpc, but a stack of the remaining LAE surface brightness profiles is consistent with the WFPC2 point-spread function. This suggests that the Ly alpha emission in these objects originates from a compact (less than or similar to 2 kpc) region and cannot be significantly more extended than the far-UV continuum emission (less than or similar to 1 kpc). Comparing our WFPC2 photometry to previous ground-based measurements of their monochromatic fluxes, we find at 95% (99.7%) confidence that we cannot be missing more than 22% (32%) of the Ly alpha emission.
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