A Magnified Compact Galaxy at Redshift 9.51 with Strong Nebular Emission Lines
Abstract
Ultraviolet light from early galaxies is thought to have ionized gas in the intergalactic medium. However, there are few observational constraints on this epoch because of the faintness of those galaxies and the redshift of their optical light into the infrared. We report the observation, in JWST imaging, of a distant galaxy that is magnified by gravitational lensing. JWST spectroscopy of the galaxy, at rest-frame optical wavelengths, detects strong nebular emission lines that are attributable to oxygen and hydrogen. The measured redshift is z = 9.51 +- 0.01, corresponding to 510 million years after the Big Bang. The galaxy has a radius of 16.2+4.6-7.2 parsecs, which is substantially more compact than galaxies with equivalent luminosity at z = 6 to 8, leading to a high star formation rate surface density.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2210.15699,
title = {A Magnified Compact Galaxy at Redshift 9.51 with Strong Nebular Emission Lines},
author = {Hayley Williams and Patrick L. Kelly and Wenlei Chen and Gabriel Brammer and Adi Zitrin and Tommaso Treu and Claudia Scarlata and Anton M. Koekemoer and Masamune Oguri and Yu-Heng Lin and Jose M. Diego and Mario Nonino and Jens Hjorth and Danial Langeroodi and Tom Broadhurst and Noah Rogers and Ismael Perez-Fournon and Ryan J. Foley and Saurabh Jha and Alexei V. Filippenko and Lou Strolger and Justin Pierel and Frederick Poidevin and Lilan Yang},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2210.15699},
year = {2023}
}