BLAST: the Redshift Survey

Abstract

The Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope (BLAST) has recently surveyed ~8.7 deg^2 centered on GOODS-South at 250, 350, and 500 microns. In Dye et al. (2009) we presented the catalogue of sources detected at 5-sigma in at least one band in this field and the probable counterparts to these sources in other wavebands. In this paper, we present the results of a redshift survey in which we succeeded in measuring redshifts for 82 of these counterparts. The spectra show that the BLAST counterparts are mostly star-forming galaxies but not extreme ones when compared to those found in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Roughly one quarter of the BLAST counterparts contain an active nucleus. We have used the spectroscopic redshifts to carry out a test of the ability of photometric redshift methods to estimate the redshifts of dusty galaxies, showing that the standard methods work well even when a galaxy contains a large amount of dust. We have also investigated the cases where there are two possible counterparts to the BLAST source, finding that in at least half of these there is evidence that the two galaxies are physically associated, either because they are interacting or because they are in the same large-scale structure. Finally, we have made the first direct measurements of the luminosity function in the three BLAST bands. We find strong evolution out to z=1, in the sense that there is a large increase in the space-density of the most luminous galaxies. We have also investigated the evolution of the dust-mass function, finding similar strong evolution in the space-density of the galaxies with the largest dust masses, showing that the luminosity evolution seen in many wavebands is associated with an increase in the reservoir of interstellar matter in galaxies.

Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. Maps and associated results are available at http://blastexperiment.info/

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• Herschel-ATLAS: Multi-wavelength SEDs and physical properties of 250 micron-selected galaxies at z < 0.5
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• A joint analysis of BLAST 250--500um and LABOCA 870um observations in the Extended Chandra Deep Field South
• Detailed dust modelling in the L-Galaxies semi-analytic model of galaxy formation
• The Herschel Virgo Cluster Survey: I. Luminosity functions
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• A Far-Infrared Spectroscopic Survey of Intermediate Redshift (Ultra) Luminous Infrared Galaxies
• The origin of dust in galaxies across cosmic time
• The HerMES SPIRE submillimeter local luminosity function
• H-ATLAS: estimating redshifts of Herschel sources from sub-mm fluxes
• Mid-infrared spectroscopy of candidate AGN-dominated submillimeter galaxies
• First results from HerMES on the evolution of the submillimetre luminosity function
• The New Galaxy Evolution Paradigm Revealed by the Herschel Surveys
• The HerMES sub-millimetre local and low-redshift luminosity functions
• The XMM-SERVS survey: XMM-Newton point-source catalogs for the W-CDF-S and ELAIS-S1 fields
• GAMA/H-ATLAS: The Local Dust Mass Function and Cosmic Density as a Function of Galaxy Type - A Benchmark for Models of Galaxy Evolution
• AzTEC half square degree survey of the SHADES fields - II. Identifications, redshifts, and evidence for large-scale structure
• Herschel-PACS observations of [OI]63um towards submillimetre galaxies at z~1
• Submillimeter Galaxy Number Counts and Magnification by Galaxy Clusters
• Spectroscopic Characterisation of 250um-Selected Hyper-Luminous Star Forming Galaxies
• Physical properties of Herschel selected galaxies in a semi-analytic galaxy formation model
• Bent-Tailed Radio Sources in the Australia Telescope Large Area Survey of the Chandra Deep Field-South
• Searching for the highest redshift sources in 250-500 micron submillimeter surveys
• Infrared luminosity functions and dust mass functions in the EAGLE simulation
• The BLAST 250-micron selected galaxy population in GOODS-South
• Far Infrared Luminosity Function of Local Star-forming Galaxies in the AKARI Deep Field South
• The cosmic spectral energy distribution in the EAGLE simulation
• Stacked Average Far-Infrared Spectrum of Dusty Star-Forming Galaxies from the Herschel/SPIRE Fourier Transform Spectrometer
• Exploring the relation between dust mass and galaxy properties using Dusty SAGE
• The ATLAS 9.0 GHz Survey of the Extended Chandra Deep Field South: The Faint 9.0 GHz Radio Population
• LADUMA: Discovery of a luminous OH megamaser at $z>0.5$
• A panchromatic study of BLAST counterparts: total star-formation rate, morphology, AGN fraction and stellar mass
• The Infrared Properties of Sources Matched in the WISE all-sky and Herschel-ATLAS Surveys
• The faint end of the 250 micron luminosity function at z < 0.5
• IllustrisTNG and S2COSMOS: possible conflicts in the evolution of neutral gas and dust
• Evolution of the star formation histories of BLAST galaxies
• Lenses In VoicE (LIVE): Searching for strong gravitational lenses in the VOICE@VST survey using Convolutional Neural Networks
• A new method to measure evolution of the galaxy luminosity function
• A comparison of dust content and properties in GAMA/G10-COSMOS/3D-HST and SIMBA cosmological simulations