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A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far, Far Away: A Candidate z ~ 12 Galaxy in Early JWST CEERS Imaging

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arxiv 2207.12474 v2 pith:Q4WR2TT5 submitted 2022-07-25 astro-ph.GA

A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far, Far Away: A Candidate z ~ 12 Galaxy in Early JWST CEERS Imaging

Steven L. Finkelstein , Micaela B. Bagley , Pablo Arrabal Haro , Mark Dickinson , Henry C. Ferguson , Jeyhan S. Kartaltepe , Casey Papovich , Denis Burgarella
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Dale D. Kocevski Marc Huertas-Company Kartheik G. Iyer Rebecca L. Larson Pablo G. P\'erez-Gonz\'alez Caitlin Rose Sandro Tacchella Stephen M. Wilkins Katherine Chworowsky Aubrey Medrano Alexa M. Morales Rachel S. Somerville L. Y. Aaron Yung Adriano Fontana Mauro Giavalisco Andrea Grazian Norman A. Grogin Lisa J. Kewley Anton M. Koekemoer Allison Kirkpatrick Peter Kurczynski Jennifer M. Lotz Laura Pentericci Nor Pirzkal Swara Ravindranath Russell E. Ryan Jr. Jonathan R. Trump Guang Yang Omar Almaini Ricardo O. Amor\'in Marianna Annunziatella Bren E. Backhaus Guillermo Barro Peter Behroozi Eric F. Bell Rachana Bhatawdekar Laura Bisigello Volker Bromm V\'eronique Buat Fernando Buitrago Antonello Calabr\'o Caitlin M. Casey Marco Castellano \'Oscar A. Ch\'avez Ortiz Laure Ciesla Nikko J. Cleri Seth H. Cohen Justin W. Cole Kevin C. Cooke M. C. Cooper Asantha R. Cooray Luca Costantin Isabella G. Cox Darren Croton Emanuele Daddi Romeel Dav\'e Alexander de la Vega Avishai Dekel David Elbaz Vicente Estrada-Carpenter Sandra M. Faber Vital Fern\'andez Keely D. Finkelstein Jonathan Freundlich Seiji Fujimoto \'Angela Garc\'ia-Argum\'anez Jonathan P. Gardner Eric Gawiser Carlos G\'omez-Guijarro Yuchen Guo Timothy S. Hamilton Nimish P. Hathi Benne W. Holwerda Michaela Hirschmann Taylor A. Hutchison Anne Jaskot Saurabh W. Jha Shardha Jogee St\'ephanie Juneau Intae Jung Susan A. Kassin Aur\'elien Le Bail Gene C. K. Leung Ray A. Lucas Benjamin Magnelli Kameswara Bharadwaj Mantha Jasleen Matharu Elizabeth J. McGrath Daniel H. McIntosh Emiliano Merlin Bahram Mobasher Jeffrey A. Newman David C. Nicholls Viraj Pandya Marc Rafelski Kaila Ronayne Paola Santini Lise-Marie Seill\'e Ekta A. Shah Lu Shen Raymond C. Simons Gregory F. Snyder Elizabeth R. Stanway Amber N. Straughn Harry I. Teplitz Brittany N. Vanderhoof Jes\'us Vega-Ferrero Weichen Wang Benjamin J. Weiner Christopher N. A. Willmer Stijn Wuyts Jorge A. Zavala
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We report the discovery of a candidate galaxy with a photo-z of z~12 in the first epoch of the JWST Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) Survey. Following conservative selection criteria we identify a source with a robust z_phot = 11.8^+0.3_-0.2 (1-sigma uncertainty) with m_F200W=27.3, and >7-sigma detections in five filters. The source is not detected at lambda < 1.4um in deep imaging from both HST and JWST, and has faint ~3-sigma detections in JWST F150W and HST F160W, which signal a Ly-alpha break near the red edge of both filters, implying z~12. This object (Maisie's Galaxy) exhibits F115W-F200W > 1.9 mag (2-sigma lower limit) with a blue continuum slope, resulting in 99.6% of the photo-z PDF favoring z > 11. All data quality images show no artifacts at the candidate's position, and independent analyses consistently find a strong preference for z > 11. Its colors are inconsistent with Galactic stars, and it is resolved (r_h = 340 +/- 14 pc). Maisie's Galaxy has log M*/Msol ~ 8.5 and is highly star-forming (log sSFR ~ -8.2 yr^-1), with a blue rest-UV color (beta ~ -2.5) indicating little dust though not extremely low metallicity. While the presence of this source is in tension with most predictions, it agrees with empirical extrapolations assuming UV luminosity functions which smoothly decline with increasing redshift. Should followup spectroscopy validate this redshift, our Universe was already aglow with galaxies less than 400 Myr after the Big Bang.

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