CaltechAUTHORS
Published July 2022 | Version Published + Accepted Version
Journal Article Open

Reconciling the results of the z ∼ 2 MOSDEF and KBSS-MOSFIRE Surveys

Creators

  • 1. ROR icon University of California, Los Angeles
  • 2. ROR icon University of California, Berkeley
  • 3. ROR icon California Institute of Technology
  • 4. ROR icon Princeton University
  • 5. ROR icon University of California, San Diego
  • 6. ROR icon Leiden University
  • 7. ROR icon University of Cambridge
  • 8. ROR icon Carnegie Observatories
  • 9. ROR icon University of Arizona
  • 10. ROR icon Franklin & Marshall College
  • 11. ROR icon Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
  • 12. ROR icon Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics
  • 13. ROR icon The University of Texas at Austin
  • 14. ROR icon College of Wooster
  • 15. ROR icon Stonehill College
  • 16. ROR icon University of the Pacific

Abstract

The combination of the MOSDEF and KBSS-MOSFIRE surveys represents the largest joint investment of Keck/MOSFIRE time to date, with ∼3000 galaxies at 1.4 ≲ z ≲ 3.8, roughly half of which are at z ∼ 2. MOSDEF is photometric- and spectroscopic-redshift selected with a rest-optical magnitude limit, while KBSS-MOSFIRE is primarily selected based on rest-UV colours and a rest-UV magnitude limit. Analysing both surveys in a uniform manner with consistent spectral-energy-distribution (SED) models, we find that the MOSDEF z ∼ 2 targeted sample has higher median M* and redder rest U−V colour than the KBSS-MOSFIRE z ∼ 2 targeted sample, and smaller median SED-based SFR and sSFR (SFR(SED) and sSFR(SED)). Specifically, MOSDEF targeted a larger population of red galaxies with U−V and V−J ≥1.25, while KBSS-MOSFIRE contains more young galaxies with intense star formation. Despite these differences in the z ∼ 2 targeted samples, the subsets of the surveys with multiple emission lines detected and analysed in previous work are much more similar. All median host-galaxy properties with the exception of stellar population age – i.e. M*, SFR(SED), sSFR(SED), AV, and UVJ colours – agree within the uncertainties. Additionally, when uniform emission-line fitting and stellar Balmer absorption correction techniques are applied, there is no significant offset between both samples in the [O iii]λ5008/H β versus [N ii]λ6585/H α diagnostic diagram, in contrast to previously reported discrepancies. We can now combine the MOSDEF and KBSS-MOSFIRE surveys to form the largest z ∼ 2 sample with moderate-resolution rest-optical spectra and construct the fundamental scaling relations of star-forming galaxies during this important epoch.

Additional Information

© 2022 The Author(s) Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal Astronomical Society. This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model). Received: 17 December 2021. Revision received: 12 April 2022. Accepted: 13 April 2022. Published: 29 April 2022. We acknowledge support from NSF AAG grants AST1312780, 1312547, 1312764, 1313171, 1313472, 2009313, 2009085, and 2009278; grant AR-13907 from the Space Telescope Science Institute; and grant NNX16AF54G from the NASA ADAP program. We also acknowledge a NASA contract supporting the 'WFIRST Extragalactic Potential Observations (EXPO) Science Investigation Team' (15-WFIRST15-0004), administered by GSFC. Support for this work was also provided through the NASA Hubble Fellowship grant #HST-HF2-51469.001-A awarded by the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Incorporated, under NASA contract NAS5-26555. We thank the 3D-HST collaboration, who provided spectroscopic and photometric catalogues used to select MOSDEF targets and to derive stellar population parameters. We acknowledge the First Carnegie Symposium in Honor of Leonard Searle for useful information and discussions that benefited this work. This research made use of ASTROPY,3 a community-developed core PYTHON package for Astronomy (Astropy Collaboration 2013, 2018). Finally, we wish to extend special thanks to those of Hawaiian ancestry on whose sacred mountain we are privileged to be guests. Based on data obtained at the W.M. Keck Observatory, which is operated as a scientific partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and was made possible by the generous financial support of the W.M. Keck Foundation. Facilities: Keck/MOSFIRE, Keck/LRIS, SDSS Software: Astropy (Astropy Collaboration 2013, 2018), Corner (Foreman-Mackey 2016), IPYTHON (Perez & Granger 2007), IRAF (Tody 1986, 1993), MATPLOTLIB (Hunter 2007), NUMPY (van der Walt, Colbert & Varoquaux 2011; Harris et al. 2020), PANDAS (pandas development team 2020), SciPy (Oliphant 2007; Millman & Aivazis 2011; Virtanen et al. 2020). Based on data obtained at the W.M. Keck Observatory, which is operated as a scientific partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and was made possible by the generous financial support of the W.M. Keck Foundation. DATA AVAILABILITY. The data underlying this article will be shared on reasonable request to the corresponding author.

Attached Files

Published - stac1115.pdf

Accepted Version - 2112.09715.pdf

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Additional details

Identifiers

Eprint ID
116017
Resolver ID
CaltechAUTHORS:20220802-742857000

Related works

Describes
https://arxiv.org/abs/2112.09715 (URL)

Funding

NSF
AST-1312780
NSF
AST-1312547
NSF
AST-1312764
NSF
AST-1313171
NSF
AST-1313472
NSF
AST-2009313
NSF
AST-2009085
NSF
AST-2009278
NSF
AR-13907
NASA
NNX16AF54G
NASA
15-WFIRST15-0004
NASA Hubble Fellowship
HST-HF2-51469.001
NASA
NAS5-26555
W. M. Keck Foundation

Dates

Created
2022-08-02
Created from EPrint's datestamp field
Updated
2022-08-02
Created from EPrint's last_modified field

Caltech Custom Metadata

Caltech groups
Astronomy Department