AnHSTmorphological survey of faint extremely red objects

Abstract

We present the results from a survey for extremely red objects (EROs) in deep, high-resolution optical images taken from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Medium Deep Survey. We have surveyed 35 deep F814W HST/WFPC2 fields in the near-infrared to a typical depth of K 20. From a total area of 206 arcmin 2 and to a limit of K = 20.0, we identify 224 EROs [(1.14 ± 0.08) arcmin −2 ] with (I 814 − K) 4.0 and 83 [(0.41 ± 0.05) arcmin −2 ] with (I 814 − K) 5.0. We find that the slope of the number counts of the (I 814 − K) 4.0 EROs flattens beyond K ∼ 19, in line with results from previous surveys, and the typical colours of the EROs become redder beyond the break magnitude. We morphologically classify our ERO sample using visual and quantitative schemes and find that 35 per cent of our sample exhibit clear disc components, 15 per cent are disturbed or irregular, a further 30 per cent are either spheroidal or compact and the remaining 20 per cent are unclassifiable. Using a quantitative measure of morphology, we find that the ERO morphological distribution evolves across the break in their counts, such that low concentration (disc-like) galaxies decline. We relate the morphological and colour information for our EROs and conclude that those EROs morphologically classified as bulges do indeed possess SEDs consistent with passive stellar populations; while EROs with dusty star-forming SEDs are mostly associated with disc-like and peculiar galaxies. However, ∼30 per cent of disc EROs reside in the passive region of I/J/K colour‐colour space. These could be either genuinely passive systems, lower redshift contaminants to the high-z ERO population, or systems with composite star-forming and passive SEDs. We use photometric redshifts for our high signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) multicolour photometry and derive redshift distributions in good agreement with spectroscopic work of somewhat brighter ERO examples.