COSMOS-Web: an overview of the JWST Cosmic Origins Survey

Caitlin M. Casey, Jeyhan S. Kartaltepe, Nicole E. Drakos, Maximilien Franco, Santosh Harish, Louise Paquereau, Olivier Ilbert, Caitlin Rose, Isabella G. Cox, James W. Nightingale, Brant E. Robertson, John D. Silverman, Anton M. Koekemoer, Richard Massey, Henry Joy McCracken, Jason Rhodes, Hollis B. Akins, Aristeidis Amvrosiadis, Rafael C. Arango-Toro, Micaela B. BagleyAngela Bongiorno, Peter L. Capak, Jaclyn B. Champagne, Nima Chartab, Oscar A. Chavez Ortiz, Katherine Chworowsky, Kevin C. Cooke, Olivia R. Cooper, Behnam Darvish, Xuheng Ding, Andreas L. Faisst, Steven L. Finkelstein, Seiji Fujimoto, Fabrizio Gentile, Steven Gillman, Katriona M. L. Gould, Ghassem Gozaliasl, Christopher C. Hayward, Qiuhan He, Shoubaneh Hemmati, Michaela Hirschmann, Knud Jahnke, Shuowen Jin, Ali Ahmad Khostovan, Vasily Kokorev, Erini Lambrides, Clotilde Laigle, Rebecca L. Larson, Gene C. K. Leung, Daizhong Liu, Tobias Liaudat, Arianna S. Long, Georgios Magdis, Guillaume Mahler, Vincenzo Mainieri, Sinclaire M. Manning, Claudia Maraston, Crystal L. Martin, Jacqueline E. McCleary, Jed McKinney, Conor J. R. McPartland, Bahram Mobasher, Rohan Pattnaik, Alvio Renzini, R. Michael Rich, Zahra Sattari, Diana Scognamiglio, Nick Scoville, Kartik Sheth, Marko Shuntov, Martin Sparre, Tomoko L. Suzuki, Margherita Talia, Sune Toft, Benny Trakhtenbrot, C. Megan Urry, Francesco Valentino, Brittany N. Vanderhoof, Eleni Vardoulaki, John R. Weaver, Katherine E. Whitaker, Stephen M. Wilkins, Lilan Yang, Jorge A. Zavala

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Abstract

We present the survey design, implementation, and outlook for COSMOS-Web, a 255 hour treasury program conducted by the James Webb Space Telescope in its first cycle of observations. COSMOS Web is a contiguous 0.54 deg2 NIR Camimaging survey in four filters (F115W, F150W, F277W, and F444W) that will reach 5σ point source depths ranging ∼27.5–28.2 magnitudes. In parallel, we will obtain 0.19 deg2 of MIRI imaging in one filter (F770W) reaching 5σ point source depths of ∼25.326.0 magnitudes. COSMOS-Web will build on the rich heritage of multiwavelength observations and data products available in the COSMOS field. The design of COSMOS-Web is motivated by three primary science goals: (1) to discover thousands of galaxies in the Epoch of Reionization (6<∼z<∼11) and map reionization’s spatial distribution, environments, and drivers on scales sufficiently large to mitigate cosmic variance, (2) to identify hundreds of rare quiescent galaxies at z > 4 and place constraints on the formation of the Universe’s most massive galaxies (M> 1010 M), and (3) directly measure the evolution of the stellar mass to halo mass relation using weak gravitational lensing out to z∼2.5 and measure its variance with galaxies’ star formation histories and morphologies. In addition, we anticipate COSMOS-Web’s legacy value to reach far beyond these scientific goals, touching many other areas of astrophysics, such as the identification of the first direct collapse black hole candidates, ultracool sub-dwarf stars in the Galactic halo, and possibly the identification of z > 10 pair-instability supernovae. In this paper we provide an overview of the survey’s key measurements, specifications, goals, and prospects for new discovery.
Original languageEnglish
Article number31
Number of pages32
JournalThe Astrophysical Journal
Volume954
Issue number1
Early online date21 Aug 2023
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Sept 2023

Keywords

  • sky surveys
  • large-scale structure of the universe
  • galaxy evolution
  • reionization
  • weak gravitational lensing

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