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Great progress has been made in the past 5 years with the Hubble
and Spitzer Space Telescopes in locating and characterizing star-
forming galaxies
during the first 2 billion years of cosmic history. But almost
exclusively, these conclusions have been based on photometrically-
derived
properties. How reliable are these results? Using a variety of
spectrographs
available on the Keck telescopes, my colleagues and I have undertaken a
survey of almost a 1000 Lyman break galaxies spanning the redshift
range from 3 up to 8, during which time we witness significant changes
in the nature of the intergalactic medium and the assembly history
of the early galaxy population.
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