Marcia Rieke, Santiago Arribas, Andrew Bunker, Stephané Charlot, Steve Finkelstein, Roberto Maiolino, Brant Robertson, Chris Willott, Rogier Windhorst, Daniel Eisenstein, Erica Nelson, Sandro Tacchella, Eiichi Egami, Ryan Endsley, Brenda Frye, Kevin Hainline, Raphael Hviding, George Rieke, Christina Williams, Christopher Willmer, Charity Woodrum. 2020. JWST GTO/ERS Deep Surveys. Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society 51, 3
Discovering and characterizing the first galaxies to form in the early Universe is one of the prime reasons for building a large, cold telescope in space, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). This white paper describes an integrated Guaranteed Time Observer program using 800 hours of prime time and 800 hours of parallel time to study the formation and evolution of galaxies from z ~2 to z~14, combining NIRSpec, NIRCam, and MIRI data in a coordinated observing program. These programs are likely to shape the course of high redshift investigations for the 2020s. NIRCam will be used to image over 200 square arc minutes using a suite of seven wide filters and two medium width filters to create an imaging dataset used for multiple goals including derivation of luminosity functions beyond the current redshift frontier, the early evolution of galaxy morphologies, discovery of the first quenched galaxies, stellar mass buildup in the first billion years, study of morphologies versus redshift, estimation of photometric redshifts, and selection of objects for spectroscopy with NIRSpec. Spectra of several thousand galaxies from the NIRSpec portion of the program will enable studies such as measuring chemical enrichment and the build-up of stellar mass with redshift, disappearance of Lyman- during reionization, and the role of feedback in shaping the evolution of galaxies. We hope to increase the value of our survey to the community early in the decade and in the scientific life of JWST by releasing some imaging and spectroscopic data prior to the end of the JADES proprietary period.
