M. Huertas-Company, K. G. Iyer, E. Angeloudi, M. B. Bagley, S. L. Finkelstein, J. S. Kartaltepe, E. J. McGrath, R. Sarmiento, J. Vega-Ferrero, P. A. Haro, P. Behroozi, F. Buitrago, Y. S. Cheng, L. Costantin, A. Dekel, M. E. Dickinson, D. Elbaz, N. A. Grogin, N. P. Hathi, B. W. Holwerda, A. M. Koekemoer, R. A. Lucas, C. Papovich, Pablo G. Perez-Gonzalez, N. Pirzkal, L. Seillé, A. de La Vega, S. Wuyts, G. Yang, L. Y. A. Yung
Abstract
Context. The James Webb Space Telescope’s (JWST’s) unprecedented combination of sensitivity, spatial resolution, and infrared coverage has enabled a new era of galaxy morphology exploration across most of cosmic history.
Aims. We analyze the near-infrared (NIR ∼ 0.8 − 1 μm) rest-frame morphologies of galaxies with log M*/M⊙ > 9 in the redshift range of 0 < z < 6, compare with previous HST-based results and release the first JWST-based morphological catalog of ∼20 000 galaxies in the CEERS survey.
Methods. We classified the galaxies in our sample into four main broad classes: spheroid, disk+spheroid, disk, and disturbed, based on imaging with four filters: F150W, F200W, F356W, and F444W. We used convolutional neural networks (CNNs) trained on HST/WFC3 labeled images and domain-adapted to JWST/NIRCam.
Results. We find that ∼90% and ∼75% of galaxies at z < 3 have the same early and late and regular and irregular classification, respectively, in JWST and HST imaging when considering similar wavelengths. For small (large) and faint objects, JWST-based classifications tend to systematically present less bulge-dominated systems (peculiar galaxies) than HST-based ones, but the impact on the reported evolution of morphological fractions is less than ∼10%. Using JWST-based morphologies at the same rest-frame wavelength (∼0.8 − 1 μm), we confirm an increase in peculiar galaxies and a decrease in bulge-dominated galaxies with redshift, as reported in previous HST-based works, suggesting that the stellar mass distribution, in addition to light distribution, is more disturbed in the early Universe. However, we find that undisturbed disk-like systems already dominate the high-mass end of the late-type galaxy population (log M*/M⊙ > 10.5) at z ∼ 5, and bulge-dominated galaxies also exist at these early epochs, confirming a rich and evolved morphological diversity of galaxies ∼1 Gyr after the Big Bang. Finally, we find that the morphology-quenching relation is already in place for massive galaxies at z > 3, with massive quiescent galaxies (log M*/M⊙ > 10.5) being predominantly bulge-dominated.
Keywords
catalogs / galaxies: evolution / galaxies: high-redshift / galaxies: statistics / galaxies: structure
Notes
The catalog is available at the CDS via anonymous ftp to cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr (130.79.128.5) or via https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/A+A/685/A48
Astronomy & Astrophysics
Volume 685, Article Number A48, Number of pages 28
2024 May
