Early Results from GLASS-JWST. XVII. Building the First Galaxies—Chapter 1. Star Formation Histories for 5 < z < 7 Galaxies

Alan Dressler, Benedetta Vulcani, Tommaso Treu, Marcia Rieke, Chris Burns, Antonello Calabrò, Andrea Bonchi, Marco Castellano, Adriano Fontana, Nicha Leethochawalit, Charlotte Mason, Emiliano Merlin, Takahiro Morishita, Diego Paris, Marusa Bradac, Amata Mercurio, Themiya Nanayakkara, Bianca M. Poggianti, Paola Santini, Xin WangKarl Misselt, Daniel P. Stark, Christopher Willmer

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

12 Scopus citations

Abstract

The JWST observations of high-redshift galaxies are used to measure their star formation histories—the buildup of stellar mass in the earliest galaxies. Here we use a novel analysis program, SEDz*, to compare near-IR spectral energy distributions for galaxies with redshifts 5 < z < 7 to combinations of stellar population templates evolved from z = 12. We exploit NIRCam imaging in seven wide bands covering 1-5 μm taken in the context of the GLASS-JWST-ERS program and use SEDz* to solve for well-constrained star formation histories for 24 exemplary galaxies. In this first look, we find a variety of histories, from long, continuous star formation over 5 < z < 12 to short but intense starbursts, sometimes repeating, and, most commonly, contiguous mass buildup lasting ∼0.5 Myr, possibly the seeds of today’s typical M* galaxies.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article numberL27
JournalAstrophysical Journal Letters
Volume947
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Apr 1 2023

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Astronomy and Astrophysics
  • Space and Planetary Science

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