Unraveling the Origins of the Cosmos: A Large Population of JADES Candidate Galaxies at 𝑧 > 8

JWST has already revolutionized our understanding of galaxy evolution by uncovering populations of galaxies tracing back to only the first few hundred million years after the Big Bang. The JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES) GTO program combines hundreds of hours of deep NIRCam imaging and NIRSpec spectroscopy across the well-studied GOODS-S and GOODS-N fields. Using deep existing HST and JADES NIRCam photometry, we have uncovered a population of hundreds of candidate galaxies at z > 8 across both the GOODS-S and GOODS-N regions, including dozens at z > 12. Many of these sources have been spectroscopically confirmed from both JADES NIRSpec observations as well as NIRCam slitless spectroscopic observations from the public Cycle-1 GO program FRESCO. In this talk, I will describe the photometric redshift methods used to find these objects, highlight some of the most interesting sources, and discuss the challenges in selecting high-redshift galaxies in JWST data. Ultimately, these and other candidate high-redshift galaxies provide a window into the earliest stages of galaxy formation and evolution, and hold the potential to transform our understanding of galaxy evolution.