The Hawai K-band survey. III.

The redshift identification of the sample of 298 galaxies is substantially complete to a B magnitude of 26 and an I magnitude of 22.5, and identification of observed galaxies ranges from nearly 100% completeness at K<18 to ~70% completeness at K=19-20. We note that many of the unidentified objects appear to be red (I-K) objects which are flat in the optical and spectroscopically featureless.

Strengths of spectral-line features and breaks are tabulated for the 262 galaxies with reasonably secure redshifts. The measured redshifts nearly all fall at z<1, with the exception of a compact absorption-line object at z=2.35. At K>=18, the redshift distribution is well fitted by a model with no luminosity evolution, implying that from the K-band Hubble diagram, the Hubble constant can vary at most by 10% over the redshift range from z~0.025 to 0.25, and that positive luminosity evolution at any significant level between z=0 and z=1 is ruled out.