First Batch of Candidate Galaxies at Redshifts 11 to 20 Revealed by the James Webb Space Telescope Early Release Observations

Haojing Yan, Zhiyuan Ma, Chenxiaoji Ling, Cheng Cheng, Jia-sheng Huang, Adi Zitrin

Published 2022-07-23Version 1

On July 13, 2022, NASA released to the whole world the data obtained by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Early Release Observations (ERO). These are the first set of science-grade data from this long-awaited facility, marking the beginning of a new era in astronomy. Many critical questions unanswered in the past several decades now see the hope of being addressed. JWST will push the redshift boundary far beyond what has been reached by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), and in so doing it will lead to the understanding of how the first luminous objects - first stars and first galaxies - were formed in the early universe. The red wavelength cut-off at 1.6 micron limits HST to redshift around 11, which is when the age of the universe was only ~420 million years. The NIRCam instrument, the most sensitive camera onboard JWST, extends to 5 micron and will allow for the detection of early objects only several tens of million years after the Big Bang should they exist. Among the JWST ERO targets there is a nearby galaxy cluster SMACS 0723-73, which is a massive cluster and has been long recognized as a good "cosmic telescope" to amplify the background, far-away galaxies through its gravitational lensing effect. The NIRCam field-of-view is large enough that the ERO observations have covered not only the cluster but also a flanking field not boosted by gravitational lensing. JWST is so sensitive that the flanking field also sees far beyond HST. Here we report the result from our search of candidate galaxies at redshift larger than 11 using these ERO data. We have a total of 88 such candidates spreading over the two fields, some of which could be at redshifts as high as 20. Neither the high number of such objects found nor the high redshifts they reside at are expected from the previously favored predictions.