The Hubble Space Telescope GOODS NICMOS Survey: Overview and the Evolution of Massive Galaxies at 1.5 < z < 3

We present the details and early results from a deep near-infrared survey utilizing the NICMOS instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope centred around massive M_* > 10^(11) M_⊙ galaxies at 1.7 10^(11) M_⊙, whereby we find an increase of a factor of 8 between z= 3 and 1.5, demonstrating that this is an epoch when massive galaxies establish most of their stellar mass. We also provide an overview of the evolutionary properties of these galaxies, such as their merger histories, and size evolution.

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