We investigate spectroscopically measured Ly{alpha} equivalent widths and escape fractions of 244 sources of which 95 are Lyman Break Galaxies (LBGs) and 106 Lyman Alpha Emitters (LAEs) at z~4.2, z~4.8, and z~5.6 selected from intermediate and narrow
band observations. The sources were selected from the Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS), and observed with the DEIMOS spectrograph. We find that the distribution of equivalent widths shows no evolution with redshift for both the LBG selected sources and the intermediate/narrowband LAEs. We also find that the Ly{alpha} escape fraction of intermediate and narrow band LAEs is on average higher and has a larger variation than the escape fraction of LBG selected sources. The escape fraction does not show a dependence with redshift. Similar to what has been found for LAEs at low redshifts, the sources with the highest extinctions show the lowest escape fractions. The range of escape fractions increases with decreasing extinction. This is evidence that the dust extinction is the most important factor affecting the escape of Ly{alpha} photons, but at low extinctions other factors such as HI covering fraction and gas kinematics can be just as effective at inhibiting the escape of Ly{alpha} photons.
We investigate the production of nitrogen in star forming galaxies with ultraviolet (UV) radiation detected by the Galaxy Evolution Explorer Satellite (GALEX). We use a sample of 8,745 GALEX emission line galaxies matched to the Sloan Digital Sky Sur
vey (SDSS) spectroscopic sample. We derive both gas-phase oxygen and nitrogen abundances for the sample, and apply stellar population synthesis models to derive stellar masses and star formation histories of the galaxies. We compare oxygen abundances derived using three different diagnostics. We derive the specific star formation rates of the galaxies by modeling the 7-band GALEX+SDSS photometry. We find that galaxies that have log SFR/M$_*$ > -10.0 typically have values of log N/O ~0.05 dex less than galaxies with log SFR/M$_*$ < -10.0 and similar oxygen abundances.
We report results from a pilot program to obtain spectroscopy for objects detected in the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) Medium Imaging Survey (MIS). Our study examines the properties of galaxies detected by GALEX fainter than the Sloan Digital Sk
y Survey (SDSS) spectroscopic survey. This is the first study to extend the techinques of Salim et al. 2005 to estimate stellar masses, star formation rates (SFR) and the b (star formation history) parameter for star-forming galaxies out to z~0.7. We obtain redshifts for 50 GALEX MIS sources reaching NUV=23.9 (AB mag), having counterparts in the SDSS Data Release 4 (DR4). Of our sample, 43 are starforming galaxies with z<0.7, 3 have emission line ratios indicative of AGN with z<0.7, and 4 objects with z~1 are QSOs, 3 of which are not previously cataloged. We compare our sample to a much larger sample of ~50,000 matched GALEX/SDSS galaxies with SDSS spectroscopy; while our survey is shallow, the optical counterparts to our sources reach ~3 magnitudes fainter in SDSS r magnitude than the SDSS spectroscopic sample. We use emission line diagnostics for the galaxies to determine that the sample contains mostly star-forming galaxies. The galaxies in the sample populate the blue sequence in the NUV-r vs M_r color-magnitude diagram. Our sample has SFRs, luminosities, and velocity dispersions that are similar to the samples of faint compact blue galaxies studied previously in the same redshift range by Koo et. al 1995, Guzman et. al 1996 & Phillips et. al 1997. However, our sample is ~2 mag fainter in surface brightness than the compact blue galaxies. We find that the star-formation histories for a majority of the galaxies are consistent with a recent starburst within the last 100 Myr.
