The Appearance of Primeval Galaxies

The authors discuss the appearance of protogalaxies expected by current theories for the formation of structure. They present a detailed simulation of the inhomogeneous dissipative collapse of a protogalaxy. The bright phase of evolution terminates roughly at the nominal collapse time of the initial perturbation, by which time 60% of the final stars have been formed. In order to compare this model with the primeval galaxy candidate 3C 326.1, the authors scale it to collapse at z = 1.8 and to have a total mass of 10¹²M_sun; and a final stellar mass of 10¹¹M_sun;. The morphology of the model is consistent with that observed, but it is a factor of 4 too faint.