GMOS SV program 65

We propose to obtain low-res integral-field spectra of one of the brighter candidate Damped Lyman-alpha absorption galaxies at low redshifts (z<1). To date there are only a few (3) DLA galaxies (galaxies giving rise to the DLA absorption in quasars) with confirmed zgal=zabs. Those without redshifts are identified by apparent brightness (which assumes that the DLA galaxies has a certain range in absolute magnitude) and by their infered impact parameter (which assumes that they are at the absorber redshift). Because of this, there is no way to know whether a particular type of galaxy is responsible for the majority of the DLA. Its important to know this since in order to understand what is evolving (there are abundance measures of DLA out to very large redshifts (z~4)), we need to know what type of galaxies they represent.

For the candidate near 3C196, we are very likely to get the emission lines across the galaxy in which case we would get a measure of thedistribution of dust and SFR (maybe metallicity although we already have this from the quasar spectrum). If for some reason we cannot get high enough S/N on the lines, we can coadd fibers. Wavelength coverage would be from 500nm to the cut off of the detector. Halpha is at 943nm at the target redshift. The low resolution is chosen to ensure that we get enough lines even if the redshift is not at the absorber redshift and that we get the major optical diagnostic lines.