TY - JOUR
T1 - JWST's PEARLS
T2 - Transients in the MACS J0416.1−2403 Field
AU - Yan, Haojing
AU - Ma, Zhiyuan
AU - Sun, Bangzheng
AU - Wang, Lifan
AU - Kelly, Patrick
AU - Diego, José M.
AU - Cohen, Seth H.
AU - Windhorst, Rogier A.
AU - Jansen, Rolf A.
AU - Grogin, Norman A.
AU - Beacom, John F.
AU - Conselice, Christopher J.
AU - Driver, Simon P.
AU - Frye, Brenda
AU - Coe, Dan
AU - Marshall, Madeline A.
AU - Koekemoer, Anton
AU - Willmer, Christopher N.A.
AU - Robotham, Aaron
AU - D’Silva, Jordan C.J.
AU - Summers, Jake
AU - Nonino, Mario
AU - Pirzkal, Nor
AU - Ryan, Russell E.
AU - Ortiz, Rafael
AU - Tompkins, Scott
AU - Bhatawdekar, Rachana A.
AU - Cheng, Cheng
AU - Zitrin, Adi
AU - Willner, S. P.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2023. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society.
PY - 2023/12/1
Y1 - 2023/12/1
N2 - With its unprecedented sensitivity and spatial resolution, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has opened a new window for time-domain discoveries in the infrared. Here we report observations in the only field that has received four epochs (spanning 126 days) of JWST NIRCam observations in Cycle 1. This field is toward MACS J0416.1−2403, which is a rich galaxy cluster at redshift z = 0.4 and is one of the Hubble Frontier Fields. We have discovered 14 transients from these data. Twelve of these transients happened in three galaxies (with z = 0.94, 1.01, and 2.091) crossing a lensing caustic of the cluster, and these transients are highly magnified by gravitational lensing. These 12 transients are likely of a similar nature to those previously reported based on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) data in this field, i.e., individual stars in the highly magnified arcs. However, these 12 could not have been found by HST because they were too red and too faint. The other two transients are associated with background galaxies (z = 2.205 and 0.7093) that are only moderately magnified, and they are likely supernovae. They indicate a demagnified supernova surface density, when monitored at a time cadence of a few months to a ∼3-4 μm survey limit of AB ∼28.5 mag, of ∼0.5 arcmin−2 integrated to z ≈ 2. This survey depth is beyond the capability of HST but can be easily reached by JWST.
AB - With its unprecedented sensitivity and spatial resolution, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has opened a new window for time-domain discoveries in the infrared. Here we report observations in the only field that has received four epochs (spanning 126 days) of JWST NIRCam observations in Cycle 1. This field is toward MACS J0416.1−2403, which is a rich galaxy cluster at redshift z = 0.4 and is one of the Hubble Frontier Fields. We have discovered 14 transients from these data. Twelve of these transients happened in three galaxies (with z = 0.94, 1.01, and 2.091) crossing a lensing caustic of the cluster, and these transients are highly magnified by gravitational lensing. These 12 transients are likely of a similar nature to those previously reported based on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) data in this field, i.e., individual stars in the highly magnified arcs. However, these 12 could not have been found by HST because they were too red and too faint. The other two transients are associated with background galaxies (z = 2.205 and 0.7093) that are only moderately magnified, and they are likely supernovae. They indicate a demagnified supernova surface density, when monitored at a time cadence of a few months to a ∼3-4 μm survey limit of AB ∼28.5 mag, of ∼0.5 arcmin−2 integrated to z ≈ 2. This survey depth is beyond the capability of HST but can be easily reached by JWST.
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U2 - 10.3847/1538-4365/ad0298
DO - 10.3847/1538-4365/ad0298
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85178222133
SN - 0067-0049
VL - 2
JO - Astrophysical Journal, Supplement Series
JF - Astrophysical Journal, Supplement Series
IS - 43
M1 - 43
ER -