Finding Obscured Galaxies/Black Holes/Brown Dwarfs from the James Webb Space Telescope PRIMER/SMILES fields

📖 Project Description

It has been an unanswered question that how many dusty galaxies/black holes have been undetected from the state-of-the-art observational surveys. Most faint dusty galaxies/black holes have been beyond the reach of the previous space infrared telescopes such as Spitzer (85 cm), and AKARI (65 cm). With the advent of the 6.5m James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), a revolution is happening. With 100 times better sensitivity of the 6.5m telescope than AKARI and Spitzer, we now can reveal previously undetected faint infrared sources. Dusty galaxies and black holes have distinct characteristics in the mid-infrared wavelengths. Active galactic nuclei have characteristic emission in the mid-infrared due to the high temperature of the warm dust. Mid-infrared emissions of dusty star-forming galaxies are dominated by the Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon emissions. The JWST PRIMER/SMILES fields provide us with a 17 times larger area coverage in mid-infrared wavelengths than the early release observations. Taking advantage of the JWST's superb sensitivity in the mid-infrared we identify such galaxies and black holes, previously unseen with any other telescopes.