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A massive interacting galaxy 510 million years after the Big Bang

Nature Astronomy (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

James Webb Space Telescope observations have spectroscopically confirmed the existence of galaxies as early as 300 Myr after the Big Bang and with a higher number density than what was expected based on galaxy formation models and Hubble Space Telescope observations. Yet, most sources confirmed spectroscopically so far in the first 500 Myr have rest-frame ultraviolet (UV) luminosities below the characteristic luminosity (\({M}_\mathrm{UV}^{* }\)), limiting the signal-to-noise ratio for investigating substructure. Here we present a high-resolution spectroscopic and spatially resolved study of a bright galaxy (MUV = −21.66 ± 0.03, \(\sim 2{M}_\mathrm{UV}^{* }\)) at a redshift z = 9.3127 ± 0.0002 (510 Myr after the Big Bang) with an estimated stellar mass of \(\left(1.6_{-0.4}^{+0.5}\right)\times 10^{9}\,M_{\odot }\), forming \(1{9}_{-6}^{+5}\) solar masses per year and with a metallicity of about one tenth that of solar. The system has a morphology typically associated with two interacting galaxies, with a two-component main clump of very young stars (age less than 10 Myr) surrounded by an extended stellar population (120 ± 20 Myr old, identified from modelling the NIRSpec spectrum) and an elongated clumpy tidal tail. The observations acquired at high spectral resolution identify oxygen, neon and hydrogen emission lines, as well as the Lyman break, where there is evidence of substantial absorption of Lyα. The [O ii] doublet is resolved spectrally, enabling an estimate of the electron number density and ionization parameter of the interstellar medium and showing higher densities and ionization than in analogues at lower redshifts. We identify evidence of absorption lines (silicon, carbon and iron), with low confidence individual detections but a signal-to-noise ratio larger than 6 when stacked. These absorption features suggest that Lyα is damped by the interstellar and circumgalactic media. Our observations provide evidence of a rapid and efficient build-up of mass and metals in the immediate aftermath of the Big Bang through mergers, demonstrating that there were massive galaxies with several billion stars at early times.

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Fig. 1: JWST NIRCam and NIRSpec observations of a galaxy with GLASS ID Gz9p3.
Fig. 2: Census of MUV and stellar mass of high-redshift galaxies.
Fig. 3: Location of Gz9p3 on the mass–metallicity relation.
Fig. 4: 2D colour and physical parameter distribution of Gz9p3.
Fig. 5: Morphology of Gz9p3.

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Data availability

All data used in this paper are publicly available through the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes server with the relevant programme IDs (ERS-1324 for the NIRSpec spectroscopy and DDT-2756 for the NIRCam imaging). The reduced NIRCam imaging utilized in this work from the GLASS collaboration50 is available at https://doi.org/10.17909/kw3c-n857. All other data generated throughout the analysis are available from the corresponding author on request.

Code availability

Our analysis makes use of several publicly available codes. The NIRSpec data were reduced using the msaexp code, which can be found here: https://github.com/gbrammer/msaexp. The data reduction of the NIRCam images were performed with the official STScI JWST pipeline, which can be found here: https://github.com/spacetelescope/jwst. The SED fitting analyses were performed with BAGPIPES, the latest version of which (including the templates used here) is available at https://bagpipes.readthedocs.io/en/latest/. We modelled the observed spectral emission lines using the specutils packages within Python, which can be found at https://specutils.readthedocs.io/en/stable/. We performed aperture photometry on the direct imaging using the photutils packages within Python, which can be found at https://photutils.readthedocs.io/en/stable. Galactic morphological parameters were measured using the GLASS in-house JWSTmorph package, which is publicly available at https://github.com/Anthony96/JWSTmorph.git. All other code generated throughout the analysis is available from the corresponding author on request.

Change history

  • 15 March 2024

    In the version of the article initially published, Extended Data Tables 1 and 2 were displayed as LaTex code. They have been updated, and now appear correctly as tables.

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Acknowledgements

This work is based on observations made with JWST, which is run jointly by NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency. The data were obtained from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes at STScI, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-03127 for JWST. These observations are associated with programmes JWST-ERS-1324 and JWST-DDT-2756. We acknowledge financial support from NASA (Grant No. JWST-ERS-1324). K.B., M.T., B.M. and N.D. acknowledge support from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D), through project number CE170100013. K.G. and T.N. acknowledge support from Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship FL180100060. B.M. acknowledges support from the Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarships and the Jean E Laby Foundation. We acknowledge financial support through grants PRIN-MIUR 2017WSCC32 and 2020SKSTHZ. M.B. acknowledges support from the European Research Council (Grant No. FIRSTLIGHT) and from the Slovenian national research agency (Grant Nos. N1-0238 and P1-0188). C.A.M. acknowledges support from Villum Fonden (Grant No. 37459) and the Carlsberg Foundation (Grant No. CF22-1322). The Cosmic Dawn Center is funded by the Danish National Research Foundation (Grant No. DNRF140). We acknowledge support from the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF; Large Grant 2022 for Extragalactic Surveys with JWST, PI Pentericci). E.V. acknowledges support from the INAF (GO Grant 2022 for The revolution is around the corner: JWST will probe globular cluster precursors and Population III stellar clusters at cosmic dawn). M.C. acknowledges support from INAF (a mini grant for Reionization and fundamental cosmology with high-redshift galaxies). P.S. acknowledges an INAF mini grant 2022 for The evolution of passive galaxies through cosmic time. D.M. acknowledges financial support from programme HST-GO-17231, provided through a grant from STScI under NASA contract NAS5-26555.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Physics, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia

    Kristan Boyett, Michele Trenti, Benjamin Metha & Nicoló Dalmasso

  2. ARC Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D), Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

    Kristan Boyett, Michele Trenti, Benjamin Metha & Nicoló Dalmasso

  3. National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand (NARIT), Mae Rim, Thailand

    Nicha Leethochawalit

  4. INAF Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma, Rome, Italy

    Antonello Calabró, Paola Santini, Adriano Fontana, Emiliano Merlin, Marco Castellano, Diego Paris, Sara Mascia & Laura Pentericci

  5. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Benjamin Metha, Guido Roberts-Borsani, Tommaso Treu & Matt Malkan

  6. Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe, University of Tokyo, Kashiwa, Japan

    Lilan Yang

  7. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA, USA

    Tucker Jones & Maruša Bradač

  8. Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Alaina Henry

  9. Center for Astrophysical Sciences, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Alaina Henry & Namrata Roy

  10. Cosmic Dawn Center (DAWN), Copenhagen, Denmark

    Charlotte A. Mason

  11. Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Charlotte A. Mason

  12. IPAC, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA

    Takahiro Morishita

  13. Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn, Victoria, Australia

    Themiya Nanayakkara & Karl Glazebrook

  14. School of Astronomy and Space Science, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS), Beijing, China

    Xin Wang

  15. National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Xin Wang

  16. Institute for Frontiers in Astronomy and Astrophysics, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China

    Xin Wang

  17. Department of Mathematics and Physics, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia

    Maruša Bradač

  18. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Tufts University, Medford, MA, USA

    Danilo Marchesini

  19. INAF – OAS, Osservatorio di Astrofisica e Scienza dello Spazio di Bologna, Bologna, Italy

    Eros Vanzella

  20. INAF Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova, Padua, Italy

    Benedetta Vulcani

Authors
  1. Kristan Boyett
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  2. Michele Trenti
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  3. Nicha Leethochawalit
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Contributions

K.B. identified the emission lines from the NIRSpec data, led the overall data analysis activities, produced all the figures and was primarily responsible for writing the Methods. M.T. provided advice on the data analysis and on its physical interpretation, carried out the comparison to theoretical modelling, contributed associated text in Methods, and was primarily responsible for writing the abstract and main text sections. N.L. led the SED fitting and contributed associated text in Methods. A.C. led the clumping analysis and contributed associated text in Methods. B.M. led the comparison to hydrodynamical simulations and contributed associated text in Methods. G.R.-B. led the NIRSpec data reduction. N.D. led the Lyman break modelling. L.Y. led the light profile fitting from imaging data. T.T. led the GLASS and Early Science Release survey conception, design and execution as the principal investigator of the programme and contributed advice on preparation of this paper. T.J. and A.H. contributed to the physical interpretation of the absorption lines. A.H., C.A.M., T.M., T.N. and X.W. contributed to the NIRSpec data reduction and to the development of the NIRSpec pipeline. A.F., E.M., C.A.M. and D.P. contributed to the NIRSpec data reduction and to the development of the NIRCam pipeline. All authors contributed comments during the research activities and paper preparation.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Kristan Boyett or Michele Trenti.

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Nature Astronomy thanks Pablo Arrabal Haro and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 NIRSpec 2D spectrum of Gz9p3.

Top: 2D observed-frame high resolution R ~ 2700 spectrum in the f100lp/g140h, f170lp/g235h and f290lp/g395h filter-disperser configurations. Orange and white horizontal lines show the 1σ extraction trace for the optimal and narrow kernels. In the 2D extraction, the relative proximity of the dispersed light from other sources can be seen. These spectra are not associated with an additional source within our shutter but rather with targets in separate shutters in the NIRSpec MSA with a similar row number. The narrow kernel is introduced to ensure no contamination from the dispersed light of close proximity spectra is included for the fitting of the Lyman break. Bottom: the 1D extracted spectrum (as in Fig. 1). We mark the location of the Lyman-break and detected emission lines in red in both the 1D and 2D spectra. The wavelength region contaminated by the additional source is marked in grey in the 1D.

Extended Data Fig. 2 NIRSpec constraints on the Lyman break of Gz9p3.

We present a best fit and 95% confidence interval of \({z}_{break}=9.3{5}_{-0.05}^{+0.01}\) using the narrow 1D extraction to minimize potential contamination (20px binning presented in blue at the midpoint of each bin, and raw data in gray). The orange region covers the 95% confidence interval with the solid black line showing the best fit model. The dashed lines shows the model fit using zspec = 9.313 derived from the emission lines. The independent best-fit of the Lyman break is consistent with the emission-line spectroscopic redshift solution.

Extended Data Fig. 3 Spectral energy distribution fit to the spectrum and photometry of the central region of Gz9p3.

Scaled-spectrum and aperture photometry of the main component of Gz9p3 with best fit BAGPIPES (Spec+Phot) model overlaid (red) on top of the spectrum (both binned at 20px) and the photometric flux densities (where the error bars indicate the filter width and uncertainty on the broadband imaging flux density). Wavelength regions affected by contamination are masked and shaded in gray. Each spectrum has been corrected for slit-losses to match the aperture photometry of the main component (see Extended Data Figure 5) in the F150W, F200W and F356W bands respectively.

Extended Data Fig. 4 UV absorption features in the high-resolution spectroscopy of Gz9p3.

Top panel: Stack of region ± 3000km s−1 centered on common UV-absorption lines (SiIIλ1260, 1304, OIλ1302, CIIλ1335, FeIIλ2344, 2374, 2382). The orange filled region highlights the − 500: 500km s−1 window which shows a series of absorption features exhibiting a 40% reduction flux compared to the mean stellar continuum (red line) at a 6.3σ significance. Bottom panels: the individual SiIIλ1260, CIIλ1335 and FeIIλ2344 absorption features shown over the same velocity window.

Extended Data Fig. 5 Spectral energy distribution for Gz9p3 from integrated light in key regions.

Left Panel: Overlaid onto the F277W direct imaging for the galaxy, white dashed lines show the 5σ and 20σ F277W contours. Three apertures are placed to approximately trace these contours. These include an aperture (green) over the tail tracing the 5σ contour of a clump and an inner and an outer aperture over the main component tracing the 20σ and 5σ contours (red, blue). Right Panel: Photometry and BAGPIPES SED fit (16th − 84th percentile shown by shaded region) for the full galaxy (orange, see Extended Data Table 1) and key regions from the left panel (blue = Inner, red = the annulus region created between the inner and outer apertures on the main source, and green = Tail, which we scale by × 4 to aid the viewer). Error bars derive from uncertainty on the broadband imaging flux density and the SED fitting.

Extended Data Table 1 Galaxy properties for regions within Gz9p3
Full size table
Extended Data Table 2 Observed broadband flux densities
Full size table

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Boyett, K., Trenti, M., Leethochawalit, N. et al. A massive interacting galaxy 510 million years after the Big Bang. Nat Astron (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-024-02218-7

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