Wren Suess - “Medium Bands, Mega Science: 20 bands of JWST/NIRCam imaging in the Abell 2744 field”

JWST allows us, for the first time, to map the rest-frame optical and infrared emission from faint galaxies at z>~3. In the first ~1.5 years of JWST data, these new capabilities have already begun to transform our understanding of galaxy formation and evolution. Luminous high-redshift galaxies appear to be far more common than previously thought, galaxy formation may have begun extraordinarily rapidly, and new classes of objects such as “little red dots” appear to be ubiquitous. However, many early discoveries rely on broad-band photometry — which can dramatically mix up the physical properties of distant objects (is it a massive galaxy or an AGN? a z~16 galaxy or z~5?). I’ll present the “Medium Bands, Mega Science” survey of the Abell 2744 field, the first survey to observe *all 20* medium- and broad-band filters onboard JWST/NIRCam. Our observations densely sample the full 1-5um wavelength range, effectively yielding R~15 “ultra-low-res” spectrophotometry for ~70,000 objects at 0<z<12 in just 50 hours of observing time. Furthermore, the high spatial resolution of NIRCam enables us to map out these properties and understand the distribution of stars and dust in galaxies from the cluster itself through the epoch of reionization. I’ll present our (astoundingly good) photometric redshift performance, show example maps of strong line emission and dust across nearly 10 Gyr of cosmic history, and discuss how to move towards a spectrally- and spatially-resolved understanding of our new infrared universe. Our data is all publicly available, and my main goal of the talk is to show enough beautiful images to convince everyone that medium bands really do enable mega science.