Lyman-break galaxy

For a galaxy at redshift z = 3, the Lyman break will appear to be at wavelengths of about 3600 Å, which is long enough to be detected by ground- or space-based telescopes.

Candidate galaxies around redshift z = 3 can then be selected by looking for galaxies which appear in optical images (which are sensitive to wavelengths greater than 3600 Å), but do not appear in ultraviolet images (which are sensitive to light at wavelengths shorter than 3600 Å).

[2][3] The issue of their far-infrared emission is still central to the study of Lyman-break galaxies to better understand their evolution and to estimate their total star-formation rate.

Most of the individual results rely upon information that is gathered from lensed Lyman-break galaxies or from the rest-frame ultraviolet, or from a few objects detected by the Herschel satellite[1] or using the stacking technique[4] that allows researchers to obtain averaged values for individually undetected Lyman-break galaxies.

But, recently, the stacking techniques on about 22000 galaxies allowed, for the first time, to collect some statistical information on the dust properties of LBGs.