James Webb Space Telescope Feed Post

Seeing sharper and deeper: JWST’s first glimpse of the photometric and spectroscopic properties of galaxies in the epoch of reionization

RGB cut-outs (B: F090W, F150W; G: F200W, F277W; R: F356W, F444W, generated using Trilogy, Coe et al. 2012) for the four EoR galaxies in the SMACS 0723 field that were targeted for follow-up spectroscopy with NIRSpec. These galaxies are resolved with NIRCam, exhibiting complex, irregular shapes (perhaps in part due to distortions by gravitational lensing) with bright clumps. Thus, the standard flux calibration procedures for reducing NIRSpec spectra (which assume either point-source or uniform morphologies) will likely not be optimal, even for these high-z objects. Note that we have not PSF-matched the images in the various filters when generating the RGB cut-outs, so as to highlight the irregular, clumpy nature of these objects, which is seen more clearly in the shorter wavelength NIRCam bands. We analyse the photometric and spectroscopic properties of four galaxies in the epoch of reionization (EoR) within the SMACS J0723.3-7327 JWST Early Release Observations field. Given the known spectroscopic redshifts of these sources, we investigated the accuracy with which photometric redshifts can be derived using NIRCam photometry alone, finding that F115W imaging is essential to distinguish between z ~ 8 galaxies with high equivalent width (EW) [O iii] ?5007 emission and z ~ 10 Balmer break galaxies. We find that all four sources exhibit strong (=0.6 mag) F356W-F444W colours, which sit at the extreme end of theoretical predictions from numerical simulations. We find that these galaxies deviate (by ˜0.5 dex) from the local correlation between [O iii] ?5007/H ß and [Ne iii] ?3869/[O ii], which is consistent with the predictions from simulations of high-redshift galaxies having elevated line-excitation ratios. We measure the [O iii] ?5007 rest-frame EWs both directly from the spectroscopy, and indirectly as inferred from the strong F356W-F444W colours, finding large [O iii] ?5007 EWs of 225–1740 Å. The [O iii] ?5007 and H ß EWs are consistent with those seen in extreme, intensely star-forming dwarf galaxies in the local Universe. Our structural analysis indicates that these galaxies are resolved, exhibiting irregular shapes with bright clumps. In line with the predictions from the FLARES hydrodynamic simulations, such intense star formation and extreme nebular conditions are likely the norm, rather than the exception, in the EoR. Read more at Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 523, Issue 3, August 2023, Pages 3423–3440.