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Title:
A high stellar velocity dispersion for a compact massive galaxy at redshift z = 2.186
Authors:
van Dokkum, Pieter G.; Kriek, Mariska; Franx, Marijn
Affiliation:
AA(Astronomy Department, Yale University, 260 Whitney Avenue, New Haven, Connecticut 06511, USA), AB(Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, USA), AC(Leiden Observatory, Leiden University, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands)
Publication:
Nature, Volume 460, Issue 7256, pp. 717-719 (2009). (Nature Homepage)
Publication Date:
08/2009
Origin:
NATURE
DOI:
10.1038/nature08220
Bibliographic Code:
2009Natur.460..717V

Abstract

Recent studies have found that the oldest and most luminous galaxies in the early Universe are surprisingly compact, having stellar masses similar to present-day elliptical galaxies but much smaller sizes. This finding has attracted considerable attention, as it suggests that massive galaxies have grown in size by a factor of about five over the past ten billion years (10Gyr). A key test of these results is a determination of the stellar kinematics of one of the compact galaxies: if the sizes of these objects are as extreme as has been claimed, their stars are expected to have much higher velocities than those in present-day galaxies of the same mass. Here we report a measurement of the stellar velocity dispersion of a massive compact galaxy at redshift z = 2.186, corresponding to a look-back time of 10.7Gyr. The velocity dispersion is very high at kms-1, consistent with the mass and compactness of the galaxy inferred from photometric data. This would indicate significant recent structural and dynamical evolution of massive galaxies over the past 10Gyr. The uncertainty in the dispersion was determined from simulations that include the effects of noise and template mismatch. However, we cannot exclude the possibility that some subtle systematic effect may have influenced the analysis, given the low signal-to-noise ratio of our spectrum.
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