James Webb Space Telescope Feed Post

Harvard ADS: Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) survey: The colour evolution of galaxies in the distant Universe

Paper abstract: The wavelength-coverage and sensitivity of JWST now enables us to probe the rest-frame UV - optical spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of galaxies at high-redshift (z>4). From these SEDs it is, in principle, through SED fitting possible to infer key physical properties, including stellar masses, star formation rates, and dust attenuation. These in turn can be compared with the predictions of galaxy formation simulations allowing us to validate and refine the incorporated physics. However, the inference of physical properties, particularly from photometry alone, can lead to large uncertainties and potential biases. Instead, it is now possible, and common, for simulations to be \emph{forward-modelled} to yield synthetic observations that can be compared directly to real observations. In this work, we measure the JWST broadband fluxes and colours of a robust sample of 58 the distributions differ somewhat, though our observed sample size is small and thus susceptible to statistical fluctuations. Likewise, the predicted and observed colour evolution show broad agreement, at least at 58, though, again, the sample size is small here.