TY - JOUR
T1 - Panic! at the Disks
T2 - First Rest-frame Optical Observations of Galaxy Structure at z > 3 with JWST in the SMACS 0723 Field
AU - Ferreira, Leonardo
AU - Adams, Nathan
AU - Conselice, Christopher J.
AU - Sazonova, Elizaveta
AU - Austin, Duncan
AU - Caruana, Joseph
AU - Ferrari, Fabricio
AU - Verma, Aprajita
AU - Trussler, James
AU - Broadhurst, Tom
AU - Diego, Jose
AU - Frye, Brenda L.
AU - Pascale, Massimo
AU - Wilkins, Stephen M.
AU - Windhorst, Rogier A.
AU - Zitrin, Adi
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank the anonymous referee and Dan Coe for comments that led to improvements in this manuscript. We thank Anthony Holloway, Sotirios Sanidas and Phil Perry for critical and timely help with computer infrastructure that made this work possible. We acknowledge support from the ERC Advanced Investigator Grant EPOCHS (788113), as well as a studentship from STFC. This work is based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) obtained from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes ( MAST ) at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-03127 for JWST, and NAS 5-26555 for HST. These observations are associated with program 14096 for HST, and 2736 for JWST. L.F. acknowledges financial support from Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior—Brazil (CAPES) in the form of a PhD studentship.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society.
PY - 2022/10/1
Y1 - 2022/10/1
N2 - We present early results regarding the morphological and structural properties of galaxies seen with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) at z > 3 in the Early Release Observations toward the SMACS 0723 cluster field. Using JWST we investigate, for the first time, the optical morphologies of a significant number of z > 3 galaxies with accurate photometric redshifts in this field to determine the form of galaxy structure in the relatively early universe. We use visual morphologies and Morfometryka measures to perform quantitative morphology measurements, both parametric with light profile fitting (Sérsic indices) and nonparametric (concentration, asymmetry, and smoothness (CAS) values). Using these, we measure the relative fraction of disk, spheroidal, and peculiar galaxies at 3 < z < 8. We discover the surprising result that at z > 1.5 disk galaxies dominate the overall fraction of morphologies, with a factor of ∼10 relative higher number of disk galaxies than seen by the Hubble Space Telescope at these redshifts. Our visual morphological estimates of galaxies align closely with their locations in CAS parameter space and their Sérsic indices.
AB - We present early results regarding the morphological and structural properties of galaxies seen with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) at z > 3 in the Early Release Observations toward the SMACS 0723 cluster field. Using JWST we investigate, for the first time, the optical morphologies of a significant number of z > 3 galaxies with accurate photometric redshifts in this field to determine the form of galaxy structure in the relatively early universe. We use visual morphologies and Morfometryka measures to perform quantitative morphology measurements, both parametric with light profile fitting (Sérsic indices) and nonparametric (concentration, asymmetry, and smoothness (CAS) values). Using these, we measure the relative fraction of disk, spheroidal, and peculiar galaxies at 3 < z < 8. We discover the surprising result that at z > 1.5 disk galaxies dominate the overall fraction of morphologies, with a factor of ∼10 relative higher number of disk galaxies than seen by the Hubble Space Telescope at these redshifts. Our visual morphological estimates of galaxies align closely with their locations in CAS parameter space and their Sérsic indices.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85140310527&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3847/2041-8213/ac947c
DO - 10.3847/2041-8213/ac947c
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85140310527
SN - 2041-8205
VL - 938
JO - Astrophysical Journal Letters
JF - Astrophysical Journal Letters
IS - 1
M1 - L2
ER -