Constraining the Bright-end of the UV Luminosity Function for z ~ 7 - 9
  Galaxies: results from CANDELS/GOODS-South
  The recent Hubble Space Telescope near-infrared imaging with the Wide-Field
Camera #3 (WFC3) of the GOODS-South field in the CANDELS program covering
nearly 100arcmin^2, along with already existing Advanced Camera for Surveys
optical data, makes possible the search for bright galaxy candidates at
redshift z ~ 7 - 9 using the Lyman-break technique. We present the first
analysis of z'-drop z ~ 7 candidate galaxies in this area, finding 19 objects.
We also analyse Y-drops at z ~ 8, trebling the number of bright (H_AB < 27 mag)
Y-drops from our previous work, and compare our results with those of other
groups based on the same data. The bright high redshift galaxy candidates we
find serve to better constrain the bright end of the luminosity function at
those redshift, and may also be more amenable to spectroscopic confirmation
than the fainter ones presented in various previous work on the smaller fields
(the Hubble Ultra Deep Field and the WFC 3 Early Release Science observations).
We also look at the agreement with previous luminosity functions derived from
WFC3 drop-out counts, finding a generally good agreement, except for the
luminosity function of Yan et al. (2010) at z ~ 8, which is strongly ruled out.
