Discovery of Nine Intermediate Redshift Compact Quiescent Galaxies in
  the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
  We identify nine galaxies with dynamical masses of M_dyn>10^10 M_sol as
photometric point sources, but with redshifts between z=0.2 and z=0.6, in the
Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) spectro-photometric database. All nine galaxies
have archival Hubble Space Telescope (HST) images. Surface brightness profile
fitting confirms that all nine galaxies are extremely compact (with
circularized half-light radii between 0.4 and 6.6 kpc and the median value of
0.74 kpc) for their velocity dispersion (110<sigma<340 km/s; median sigma=178
km/s). From the SDSS spectra, three systems are dominated by very young stars;
the other six are older than ~1 Gyr (two are E+A galaxies). The three young
galaxies have disturbed morphologies and the older systems have smooth profiles
consistent with a single Sersic function. All nine lie below the z~0 velocity
dispersion-half-light radius relation. The most massive system -
SDSSJ123657.44+631115.4 - lies right within the locus for massive compact z>1
galaxies and the other eight objects follow the high-redshift dynamical
size-mass relation.
