We present new rest frame UV and visible observations of 22 high-z (1 < z < 2.5) 3C radio galaxies and QSOs obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope's (HST) Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) instrument. Using a custom data reduction strategy in order to assure the removal of cosmic rays, persistence signal, and other data artifacts, we have produced high-quality science-ready images of the targets and their local environments. We observe targets with regions of UV emission suggestive of active star formation. In addition, several targets exhibit highly distorted host galaxy morphologies in the rest frame visible images. Photometric analyses reveals that brighter QSOs tend to be generally redder than their dimmer counterparts. Using emission line fluxes from the literature, we estimate that emission line contamination is relatively small in the rest frame UV images for the QSOs. Using archival VLA data, we have also created radio map overlays for each of our targets, allowing for analysis of the optical and radio axes alignment.
Statistical properties of the observed sampleThe average completion rate for HST/WFC3 SNAPSHOT programs is currently (Cycle 20-21) ∼ 30% (Workman et al. 2014). This is most likely due to the STScI policy that lowers the scheduling priority of targets belonging to programs that reach the 35% completion rate limit. As a result, our program was efficiently scheduled in the first part of the HST Cycle 20. Unfortunately, as soon as we reached the 35% limit, the observations stopped, and no other targets were scheduled after