2010/11/23 by Ruth Grützbauch, Robert W. Chuter, Grützbauch, Ruth +14
Physics and Astronomy · #Adaptive optics and wavefront sensing #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO) #FOS: Physical sciences #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #astro-ph.CO
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1011.5158
5 pages, 3 figures, to appear in the proceedings of JENAM 2010, Symposium 2 "Environment and the Formation of Galaxies: 30 years later"
arxiv created 2010/11/23 · openalex publication_date 2010/11/23 · arxiv updated 2010/11/24 · openalex created_date 2022/10/05 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We present a study of the relationship between galaxy colour, stellar mass, and local galaxy density in a deep near-infrared imaging survey up to a redshift of z~3 using the GOODS NICMOS Survey (GNS). The GNS is a very deep, near-infrared Hubble Space Telescope survey imaging a total of 45 arcmin2 in the GOODS fields, reaching a stellar mass completeness limit of M* = 109.5 Msun at z=3. Using this data we measure galaxy local densities based on galaxy counts within a fixed aperture, as well as the distance to the 3rd, 5th and 7th nearest neighbour. We find a strong correlation between colour and stellar mass at all redshifts up to z~3. We do not find a strong correlation between colour and local density, however, the highest overdensities might be populated by a higher fraction of blue galaxies than average or underdense areas, indicating a possible reversal of the colour-density relation at high redshift. Our data suggests that the possible higher blue fraction at extreme overdensities might be due to a lack of massive red galaxies at the highest local densities.