paper

Not In Our Backyard: Spectroscopic Support for the CLASH z=11 Candidate MACS0647-JD

arXiv:1502.05681 · doi:10.1088/0004-637X/804/1/11

Abstract

We report on our first set of spectroscopic Hubble Space Telescope observations of the z~11 candidate galaxy strongly lensed by the MACSJ0647.7+7015 galaxy cluster. The three lensed images are faint and we show that these early slitless grism observations are of sufficient depth to investigate whether this high-redshift candidate, identified by its strong photometric break at ~1.5 micron, could possibly be an emission line galaxy at a much lower redshift. While such an interloper would imply the existence of a rather peculiar object, we show here that such strong emission lines would clearly have been detected. Comparing realistic, two-dimensional simulations to these new observations we would expect the necessary emission lines to be detected at >5 sigma while we see no evidence for such lines in the dispersed data of any of the three lensed images. We therefore exclude that this object could be a low redshift emission line interloper, which significantly increases the likelihood of this candidate being a bona fide z~11 galaxy.

arXiv comment14 Pages. 6 Figures. 2nd revised version. Accepted. To appear in ApJ. Please contact [email protected] for comments on this paper

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