CEERS: Spatially Resolved UV and Mid-infrared Star Formation in Galaxies at 0.2 < z < 2.5: The Picture from the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes

Creators: Shen, Lu; Papovich, Casey; Yang, Guang; Matharu, Jasleen; Wang, Xin; Magnelli, Benjamin; Elbaz, David; Jogee, Shardha; Alavi, Anahita; Arrabal Haro, Pablo; Backhaus, Bren E.; Bagley, Micaela B.; Bell, Eric F.; Bisigello, Laura; Calabrò, Antonello; Cooper, M. C.; Costantin, Luca; Daddi, Emanuele; Dickinson, Mark; Finkelstein, Steven L.; Fujimoto, Seiji; Giavalisco, Mauro; Grogin, Norman A.; Guo, Yuchen; Holwerda, Benne W.; Kartaltepe, Jeyhan S.; Koekemoer, Anton M.; Kurczynski, Peter; Lucas, Ray A.; Pérez-González, Pablo G.; Pirzkal, Nor; Prichard, Laura; Rafelski, Marc; Ronayne, Kaila; Simons, Raymond C.; Sunnquist, Ben; Teplitz, Harry I.; Trump, Jonathan R.; Weiner, Benjamin J.; Windhorst, Rogier A.; Yung, L. Y. Aaron

Abstract

We present the mid-infrared (MIR) morphologies for 64 star-forming galaxies (SFGs) at 0.2 z M_* > 10⁹ M_⊙ using James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) observations from the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science survey. The MIRI bands span the MIR (7.7–21 μm), enabling us to measure the effective radii (R_(eff)) and Sérsic indexes of these SFGs at rest-frame 6.2 and 7.7 μm, which contains strong emission from Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) features, a well-established tracer of star formation in galaxies. We define a "PAH band" as the MIRI bandpass that contains these features at the redshift of the galaxy. We then compare the galaxy morphologies in the PAH bands to those in the rest-frame near-ultraviolet (NUV) using Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS)/F435W or ACS/F606W and optical/near-IR using HST WFC3/F160W imaging from UVCANDELS and CANDELS. The R_(eff) of galaxies in the PAH band are slightly smaller (∼10%) than those in F160W for galaxies with M_* ≳ 10⁹·⁵ M_⊙ at z ≤ 1.2, but the PAH band and F160W have similar fractions of light within 1 kpc. In contrast, the R_(eff) of galaxies in the NUV band are larger, with lower fractions of light within 1 kpc compared to F160W for galaxies at z ≤ 1.2. Using the MIRI data to estimate the SFR_(IR) surface density, we find that the correlation between the SFR_(IR) surface density and stellar mass has a steeper slope than that of the SFR_(UV) surface density and stellar mass, suggesting more massive galaxies having increasing amounts of obscured fraction of star formation in their inner regions. This paper demonstrates how the high-angular resolution data from JWST/MIRI can reveal new information about the morphology of obscured star formation.

Additional Information

© 2023. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society. Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI. We acknowledge the hard work of our colleagues in the CEERS and UVCANDELS collaboration and everyone involved in the JWST mission. This work benefited from support from the George P. and Cynthia Woods Mitchell Institute for Fundamental Physics and Astronomy at Texas A&M University. C.P. thanks Marsha and Ralph Schilling for generous support of this research. R.A.W. acknowledges support from NASA JWST Interdisciplinary Scientist grants NAG5-12460, NNX14AN10G and 80NSSC18K0200 from GSFC. This work acknowledges support from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope through the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Incorporated, under NASA contract NAS5-03127. Support for program No. JWST-ERS01345 was provided through a grant from the STScI under NASA contract NAS5-03127. This work is based on observations with the NASA/ESAHubble Space Telescope obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Incorporated, under NASA contract NAS5-26555. Support for Program number HST-GO-15647 was provided through a grant from the STScI under NASA contract NAS5-26555.

Attached Files

Published - Shen_2023_ApJ_950_7.pdf

Files

Shen_2023_ApJ_950_7.pdf

Files (3.5 MB)

Name	Size	Download all
Shen_2023_ApJ_950_7.pdf md5:7f46b11872132612f4539d029cf070da	3.5 MB	Preview Download

Additional details

	All versions	This version
Views	0	0
Downloads	0	0
Data volume	0 Bytes	0 Bytes