Date: 9/11/2024
Arxiv: RUBIES: a complete census of the bright and red distant Universe with
JWST/NIRSpec
Published: 9/9/2024 9:00:01 PM
Updated: 9/9/2024 9:00:01 PM
Paper abstract: We present the Red Unknowns: Bright Infrared Extragalactic Survey (RUBIES),providing JWST/NIRSpec spectroscopy of red sources selected across ~150arcmin^2 from public JWST/NIRCam imaging in the UDS and EGS fields. RUBIESnovel observing strategy offers a well-quantified selection function: thesurvey is optimised to reach high (>70%) completeness for bright and red(F150W-F444W>2) sources that are very rare. To place these rare sources incontext, we simultaneously observe a reference sample of the 23 using only the G395M disperser. The RUBIES data reveal a highlydiverse population of red sources that span a broad redshift range(z_{spec}~1-9), with photometric redshift scatter and outlier fractionthat are 3 times higher than for similarly bright sources that are less red.This diversity is not apparent from the photometric SEDs. Only spectroscopyreveals that the SEDs encompass a mixture of galaxies with dust-obscured starformation, extreme line emission, a lack of star formation indicating earlyquenching, and luminous active galactic nuclei. As a first demonstration of ourbroader selection function we compare the stellar masses and rest-frame U-Vcolours of the red sources and our reference sample: red sources are typicallymore massive (M_*~10^{10-11.5} M_\odot) across all redshifts. However, wefind that the most massive systems span a wide range in U-V colour. We describeour data reduction procedure and data quality, and publicly release the reducedRUBIES data and vetted spectroscopic redshifts of the first half of the surveythrough the DJA.
