EMISSION-LINE GALAXIES FROM THEHUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPEPROBING EVOLUTION AND REIONIZATION SPECTROSCOPICALLY (PEARS) GRISM SURVEY. I. THE SOUTH FIELDS

Abstract

We present results of a search for emission-line galaxies (ELGs) in the southern fields of the Hubble Space Telescope Probing Evolution And Reionization Spectroscopically (PEARS) grism survey. The PEARS South Fields consist of five Advanced Camera for Surveys pointings (including the Hubble Ultra Deep Field) with the G800L grism for a total of 120 orbits, revealing thousands of faint object spectra in the GOODS-South region of the sky. ELGs are one subset of objects that are prevalent among the grism spectra. Using a two-dimensional detection and extraction procedure, we find 320 emission lines originating from 226 galaxy "knots" within 192 individual galaxies. Line identification results in 118 new grism-spectroscopic redshifts for galaxies in the GOODS-South Field. We measure emission-line fluxes using standard Gaussian fitting techniques. At the resolution of the grism data, the Hβ and [O iii] doublet are blended. However, by fitting two Gaussian components to the Hβ and [O iii] features, we find that many of the PEARS ELGs have high [O iii]/Hβ ratios compared to other galaxy samples of comparable luminosities. The star formation rates of the ELGs are presented, as well as a sample of distinct giant star-forming regions at z ∼ 0.1–0.5 across individual galaxies. We find that the radial distances of these H ii regions in general reside near the galaxies' optical continuum half-light radii, similar to those of giant H ii regions in local galaxies.