The UNCOVER Survey: A First-look HST+JWST Catalog of Galaxy Redshifts and Stellar Population Properties Spanning 0.2 ≲ z ≲ 15

Bingjie Wang, Joel Leja, Ivo Labbé, Rachel Bezanson, Katherine E. Whitaker, Gabriel Brammer, Lukas J. Furtak, John R. Weaver, Sedona H. Price, Adi Zitrin, Hakim Atek, Dan Coe, Sam E. Cutler, Pratika Dayal, Pieter van Dokkum, Robert Feldmann, Danilo Marchesini, Marijn Franx, Natascha Förster Schreiber, Seiji FujimotoMarla Geha, Karl Glazebrook, Anna de Graaff, Jenny E. Greene, Stéphanie Juneau, Susan Kassin, Mariska Kriek, Gourav Khullar, Michael Maseda, Lamiya A. Mowla, Adam Muzzin, Themiya Nanayakkara, Erica J. Nelson, Pascal A. Oesch, Camilla Pacifici, Richard Pan, Casey Papovich, David J. Setton, Alice E. Shapley, Renske Smit, Mauro Stefanon, Katherine A. Suess, Edward N. Taylor, Christina C. Williams

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

The recent UNCOVER survey with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) exploits the nearby cluster A2744 to create the deepest view of our Universe to date by leveraging strong gravitational lensing. In this work, we perform photometric fitting of more than 50,000 robustly detected sources out to z ∼ 15. We show the redshift evolution of stellar ages, star formation rates, and rest-frame colors across the full range of 0.2 ≲ z ≲ 15. The galaxy properties are inferred using the Prospector Bayesian inference framework using informative Prospector-β priors on the masses and star formation histories to produce joint redshift and stellar populations posteriors. Additionally, lensing magnification is performed on the fly to ensure consistency with the scale-dependent priors. We show that this approach produces excellent photometric redshifts with σ NMAD ∼ 0.03, of a similar quality to the established photometric redshift code EAzY. In line with the open-source scientific objective of this Treasury survey, we publicly release the stellar population catalog with this paper, derived from our photometric catalog adapting aperture sizes based on source profiles. This release (the catalog and all related documentation are accessible via the UNCOVER survey web page: https://jwst-uncover.github.io/DR2.html#SPSCatalogs with a copy deposited to Zenodo at doi:10.5281/zenodo.8401181) includes posterior moments, maximum likelihood spectra, star formation histories, and full posterior distributions, offering a rich data set to explore the processes governing galaxy formation and evolution over a parameter space now accessible by JWST.

Original languageAmerican English
Article number12
JournalAstrophysical Journal, Supplement Series
Volume270
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Jan 2024

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Astronomy and Astrophysics
  • Space and Planetary Science

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