The optical appearance of model primeval galaxies

Models of giant elliptical primeval galaxies (PGs) based on Larson's models indicate that their most luminous phase occurs when their nuclei are formed. Such objects should appear as faint stellar or fuzzy stellar objects with possible emission lines and a wide range of colors dependent on their redshifts. If most gE PGs had a mass around that of the models (1011 M/sub sun/), they would be only barely detectable in a closed cosmology (m/sub R/approximately-greater-than21) and invisible in an open one, since most would have formed at high redshifts. However, more massive PGs or ones formed at zapproximately-less-than5 could be detected photometrically. Condensed PGs, masquerading as stellar images, would have escaped notice in the unsuccessful searches for extended PGs by Patridge and Davis and Wilkinson