The Star Formation Across Cosmic Time (SFACT) Survey. III. Spectroscopy of the Initial Catalog of Emission-line Objects

Abstract

The Star Formation Across Cosmic Time (SFACT) survey is a new narrowband survey designed to detect emission-line galaxies (ELGs) and quasi-stellar objects (QSOs) over a wide range of redshifts in discrete redshift windows. The survey utilizes the WIYN 3.5 m telescope and the Hydra multifiber positioner to perform efficient follow-up spectroscopy on galaxies identified in the imaging part of the survey. Because the objects in the SFACT survey are selected by their strong emission lines, it is possible to obtain useful spectra for even the faintest of our sources (r ∼ 25). Here, we present the 453 objects that have spectroscopic data from the three SFACT pilot-study fields, 415 of which are confirmed ELGs. The methodology for processing and measuring these data is outlined in this paper, and example spectra are displayed for each of the three primary emission lines used to detect objects in the survey (Hα, [O III]λ5007, and [O II]λ3727). Spectra of additional QSOs and nonprimary-emission-line detections are also shown as examples. The redshift distribution of the pilot-study sample is examined, and the ELGs are placed in different emission-line diagnostic diagrams in order to distinguish the star-forming galaxies from the active galactic nuclei.

The Star Formation Across Cosmic Time (SFACT) Survey. II. The First Catalog from a New Narrowband Survey for Emission-line Objects

“…We illustrate our survey method with numerous examples of sources discovered in our NB images, and summarize the properties of the sample derived from our imaging data. The third SFACT paper (Carr et al 2023, henceforth referred to as SFACT3) focuses on the spectroscopic component of the survey, discussing the procedures for the observations and processing of the spectral data. SFACT3 tabulates key spectroscopic data obtained for the ELGs in our pilot-study fields.…”