paper

A Hubble Space Telescope Lensing Survey of X-ray Luminous Galaxy Clusters: III. A Multiply-imaged Extremely Red Galaxy at z=1.6

arXiv:astro-ph/0203402 · doi:10.1046/j.1365-8711.2002.05501.x

Abstract

We present near-infrared spectroscopy and Hubble Space Telescope (HST) imaging of EROJ003707+0909.5, the brightest of three gravitationally-lensed images of an Extremely Red Object (ERO) at z=1.6, in the field of the massive cluster A68 (z=0.255). We exploit the superlative resolution of our HST data and the enhanced spatial resolution and sensitivity afforded by the lens amplification to reconstruct the source-plane properties of this ERO. Our morphological and photometric analysis reveals that EROJ003707 is an L* early-type disk-galaxy and we estimate that ~10 per cent of EROs with (R-K)>=5.3 and K<=21 may have similar properties. The unique association of passive EROs with elliptical galaxies therefore appears to be too simplistic. We speculate on the evolution of EROJ003707: if gas continues to cool onto this galaxy in the manner predicted by hierarchical galaxy formation models, then by the present day, EROJ003707 could evolve into a very luminous spiral galaxy.

Accepted for publication by MNRAS (Submitted: March 8, Accepted: March 14) - 5 pages, 3 figures

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