Determining the stellar masses of submillimetre galaxies: the critical importance of star formation histories

Science

Submillimetre (submm) galaxies are among the most rapidly star-forming and most massive high-redshift galaxies; thus, their properties provide important constraints on galaxy evolution models. However, there is still a debate about their stellar masses and their...

Colour matters: the effects of lensing on the positional offsets between optical and submillimetre galaxies in Herschel-ATLAS

Science

We report an unexpected variation in the positional offset distributions between Herschel-Astrophysical Terahertz Large Area Survey (H-ATLAS) submillimetre (submm) sources and their optical associations, depending on both 250-μm signal-to-noise ratio and 250/350-μm...

The decomposed bulge and disc size-mass relations of massive galaxies at 1 < z < 3 in CANDELS

Science

We have constructed a mass-selected sample of M* > 1011 M⊙ galaxies at 1 < z < 3 in the CANDELS UKIDSS UDS and COSMOS fields and have decomposed these systems into their separate bulge and disc components according to their H160- band morphologies. By...

The Progenitors of Local Ultra-massive Galaxies Across Cosmic Time: From Dusty Star-bursting to Quiescent Stellar Populations

Science

Using the UltraVISTA catalogs, we investigate the evolution in the 11.4 Gyr since z=3 of the progenitors of local ultra-massive galaxies (log(Mstar/M⊙)≈11.8; UMGs), providing a complete and consistent picture of how the most massive galaxies at z=0 have assembled. By...

A Submillimeter Galaxy Illuminating its Circumgalactic Medium: Lyman alpha Scattering in a Cold, Clumpy Outflow

Science

We report the detection at 850 microns of the central source in SSA22-LAB1, the archetypal “Lyman-alpha Blob” (LAB), a 100 kpc scale radio-quiet emission-line nebula at z = 3.1. The flux density of the source, S 850 = 4.6 ± 1.1 mJy, implies the presence of...