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UNCOVERing Astronomical Gems from our Backyard to the Edges of the Observable Universe

Presentation #100.01 in the session Fred Kavli Plenary Lecture: UNCOVERing Astronomical Gems from Our Backyard to the Edges of the Observable Universe (Rachel Bezanson, University of Pittsburgh).

Published onJun 19, 2024
UNCOVERing Astronomical Gems from our Backyard to the Edges of the Observable Universe

NASA’s latest great flagship observatory, JWST, was built in part to reveal the earliest moments of cosmic history. In less than 2 years since it began releasing data to the public, JWST has enthralled scientists and the public alike with the incredible images and spectroscopic information from astronomical objects as nearby as our solar system and beyond to the most distant reaches of the Universe. The astronomical community has set distance records, found galaxies that may be significantly larger than models suggest could exist, and demonstrated that in some cases galaxy and supermassive black hole formation was earlier and more rapid than we had ever expected. In this talk, I will highlight some of the exciting results from the UNCOVER (Ultradeep NIRSpec and NIRCam ObserVations before the Epoch of Reionization, https://jwst-uncover.github.io/) Treasury program. The UNCOVER program began in November 2022 with ultradeep NIRCam images of the Abell 2744 cluster (“Pandora’s cluster”) and within the same observing cycle targeted ~700 JWST-selected objects with deep NIRSpec PRISM spectra. These rich data have enabled spectroscopic studies of anticipated galaxy populations, including some of the most distant galaxies at cosmic dawn and the lowest mass systems that reionized the Universe. However, the same dataset has also revealed the unexpected, including extreme early supermassive black holes, dusty quiescent galaxies, and even low mass brown dwarfs in our own Milky Way. When combined with the multitude of additional multiwavelength data from other early JWST observations and HST, Chandra, ALMA, the VLT, etc., UNCOVER has helped to establish Abell 2744 as one of the premiere extragalactic fields.

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