Affiliation: University of Texas at Austin

Contribution: Oral

Title: JWST’s Glimpse: Combining deep NIRCam imaging with gravitational lensing to reveal the first galaxies

Abstract: Deep JWST observations have pushed our cosmic horizon to just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. These observations have revealed stunning properties of bright early galaxies, but the faintest galaxies in the early universe have largely avoided characterization. Here, we present early results from JWST’s Glimpse, the largest Cycle 2 JWST Program, which will be observed in September 2024 and combines ultra-deep NIRCam imaging (>40 hours per filter) with the natural lensing of a massive foreground cluster to probe down to absolute UV magnitudes as faint as -12 during the Epoch of Reionization. These observations aim to constrain the faint-end of the UV luminosity function during the Epoch of reionization to help determine whether faint or bright sources reionized the universe. Moreover, the slope of the faint-end of the luminosity function will provide crucial constraints for galaxy formation models. These deep observations also push the cosmic frontiers and promise to reveal some of the most distant galaxies detected. This talk will highlight the first results of the deepest lensing field currently allocated on JWST.

This contribution can be found here (pdf) when available.