The Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science Survey (CEERS)
Abstract
We present the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) Survey, a 77.2 hour Director's Discretionary Early Release Science Program. CEERS demonstrates, tests, and validates efficient extragalactic surveys using coordinated, overlapping parallel observations with the JWST instrument suite, including NIRCam and MIRI imaging, NIRSpec low (R~100) and medium (R~1000) resolution spectroscopy, and NIRCam slitless grism (R~1500) spectroscopy. CEERS targets the Hubble Space Telescope-observed region of the Extended Groth Strip (EGS) field, supported by a rich set of multiwavelength data. CEERS facilitated immediate community science in both of the extragalactic core JWST science drivers ``First Light" and ``Galaxy Assembly," including: 1) The discovery and characterization of large samples of galaxies at z >~ 10 from ~90 arcmin^2 of NIRCam imaging, constraining their abundance and physical nature; 2) Deep spectra of >1000 galaxies, including dozens of galaxies at 6<z<10, enabling redshift measurements and constraints on the physical conditions of star-formation and black hole growth via line diagnostics; 3) Quantifying the first bulge, bar and disk structures at z>3; and 4) Characterizing galaxy mid-IR emission with MIRI to study dust-obscured star-formation and supermassive black hole growth at z~1-3. As a legacy product for the community, the CEERS team has provided several data releases, accompanied by detailed notes on the data reduction procedures and notebooks to aid in reproducibility. In addition to an overview of the survey and quality of the data, we provide science highlights from the first two years with CEERS data.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2501.04085,
title = {The Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science Survey (CEERS)},
author = {Steven L. Finkelstein and Micaela B. Bagley and Pablo Arrabal Haro and Mark Dickinson and Henry C. Ferguson and Jeyhan S. Kartaltepe and Dale D. Kocevski and Anton M. Koekemoer and Jennifer M. Lotz and Casey Papovich and Pablo G. Perez-Gonzalez and Nor Pirzkal and Rachel S. Somerville and Jonathan R. Trump and Guang Yang and L. Y. Aaron Yung and Adriano Fontana and Andrea Grazian and Norman A. Grogin and Lisa J. Kewley and Allison Kirkpatrick and Rebecca L. Larson and Laura Pentericci and Swara Ravindranath and Stephen M. Wilkins and Omar Almaini and Ricardo O. Amorin and Guillermo Barro and Rachana Bhatawdekar and Laura Bisigello and Madisyn Brooks and Fernando Buitrago and Antonello Calabro and Marco Castellano and Yingjie Cheng and Nikko J. Cleri and Justin W. Cole and M. C. Cooper and Olivia R. Cooper and Luca Costantin and Isa G. Cox and Darren Croton and Emanuele Daddi and Kelcey Davis and Avishai Dekel and David Elbaz and Vital Fernandez and Seiji Fujimoto and Giovanni Gandolfi and Jonathan P. Gardner and Eric Gawiser and Mauro Giavalisco and Carlos Gomez-Guijarro and Yuchen Guo and Ansh R. Gupta and Nimish P. Hathi and Santosh Harish and Aurelien Henry and Michaela Hirschmann and Weida Hu and Taylor A. Hutchison and Kartheik G. Iyer and Anne E. Jaskot and Saurabh W. Jha and Intae Jung and Vasily Kokorev and Peter Kurczynski and Gene C. K. Leung and Mario Llerena and Arianna S. Long and Ray A. Lucas and Shiying Lu and Elizabeth J. McGrath and Daniel H. McIntosh and Emiliano Merlin and Alexa M. Morales and Lorenzo Napolitano and Fabio Pacucci and Viraj Pandya and Marc Rafelski and Giulia Rodighiero and Caitlin Rose and Paola Santini and Lise-Marie Seille and Raymond C. Simons and Lu Shen and Amber N. Straughn and Sandro Tacchella and Brittany N. Vanderhoof and Jesus Vega-Ferrero and Benjamin J. Weiner and Christopher N. A. Willmer and Peixin Zhu and Eric F. Bell and Stijn Wuyts and Benne W. Holwerda and Xin Wang and Weichen Wang and Jorge A. Zavala},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2501.04085},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
38 pages, 13 figures, 6 tables