The BlueTides Mock Image Catalogue: Simulated observations of high-redshift galaxies and predictions for JWST imaging surveys

Abstract

We present a mock image catalogue of ~100,000 MUV=-22.5 to -19.6 mag galaxies at z=7-12 from the BlueTides cosmological simulation. We create mock images of each galaxy with the James Webb (JWST), Hubble, Roman, and Euclid Space Telescopes, as well as Subaru, and VISTA, with a range of near- and mid-infrared filters. We perform photometry on the mock images to estimate the success of these instruments for detecting high-z galaxies. We predict that JWST will have unprecedented power in detecting high-z galaxies, with a 95% completeness limit at least 2.5 magnitudes fainter than VISTA and Subaru, 1.1 magnitudes fainter than Hubble, and 0.9 magnitudes fainter than Roman, for the same wavelength and exposure time. Focusing on JWST, we consider a range of exposure times and filters, and find that the NIRCam F356W and F277W filters will detect the faintest galaxies, with 95% completeness at m=27.4 mag in 10ks exposures. We also predict the number of high-z galaxies that will be discovered by upcoming JWST imaging surveys. We predict that the COSMOS-Web survey will detect ~1000 MUV<-20.1 mag galaxies at 6.5<z<7.5, by virtue of its large survey area. JADES-Medium will detect almost 100% of MUV<-20 mag galaxies at z<8.5 due to its significant depth, however with its smaller survey area it will detect only ~100 of these galaxies at 6.5<z<7.5. Cosmic variance results in a large range in the number of predicted galaxies each survey will detect, which is more evident in smaller surveys such as CEERS and the PEARLS NEP and GOODS-S fields.

Published in MNRAS. The BlueTides Mock Image Catalogue is publicly available as a High Level Science Product (HLSP) via the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST), at https://doi.org/10.17909/er09-4527. Example codes for using the catalogue data are available at https://github.com/madelinemarshall/BlueTidesMockImageCatalogue

References in corpus (24)

• The NumPy array: a structure for efficient numerical computation
• Introducing the Illustris Project: Simulating the coevolution of dark and visible matter in the Universe
• The Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS) -- Overview
• UV Luminosity Functions at redshifts z~4 to z~10: 10000 Galaxies from HST Legacy Fields
• The Hubble Ultra Deep Field
• Hubble Frontier Fields First Complete Cluster Data: Faint Galaxies at $z\sim 5-10$ for UV Luminosity Functions and Cosmic Reionization
• New Constraints on the Faint-end of the UV Luminosity Function at z~7-8 using the Gravitational Lensing of the Hubble Frontier Fields Cluster A2744
• The luminosity function, halo masses and stellar masses of luminous Lyman-break galaxies at redshifts 5<z<6
• The Universe at z>10: Predictions for JWST from the UniverseMachine DR1
• First Light And Reionisation Epoch Simulations (FLARES) I: Environmental Dependence of High-Redshift Galaxy Evolution
• A Search for H-Dropout Lyman Break Galaxies at z~12-16
• First Light And Reionisation Epoch Simulations (FLARES) II: The Photometric Properties of High-Redshift Galaxies
• Evidence for GN-z11 as a luminous galaxy at redshift 10.957
• The discovery of rest-frame UV colour gradients and a diversity of dust morphologies in bright z ~ 7 Lyman-break galaxies
• First Light And Reionisation Epoch Simulations (FLARES) IV: The size evolution of galaxies at $z\ge 5$
• Dust Obscured Star Forming Galaxies in the Early Universe
• The Impact of Dust on the Sizes of Galaxies in the Epoch of Reionization
• Deep Realistic Extragalactic Model (DREaM) Galaxy Catalogs: Predictions for a Roman Ultra-Deep Field
• Simulating JWST deep extragalactic imaging surveys and physical parameter recovery
• Spectroscopy with the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES) -- the NIRSpec/NIRCam GTO galaxy evolution project
• Improving $z\sim 7-11$ Galaxy Property Estimates with JWST/NIRCam Medium-Band Photometry
• JWST/MIRI Simulated Imaging: Insights into Obscured Star-Formation and AGN for Distant Galaxies in Deep Surveys
• Observing the host galaxies of high-redshift quasars with JWST: predictions from the BlueTides simulation
• Simulating JWST/NIRCam Color Selection of High-Redshift Galaxies

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Semi-analytic forecasts for JWST -- VI. Simulated lightcones and galaxy clustering predictions
• First Light And Reionisation Epoch Simulations (FLARES) VI: The colour evolution of galaxies $z=5-15$
• The impact of medium-width bands on the selection, and subsequent luminosity function measurements, of high-z galaxies
• Super-resolution simulation of the Fuzzy Dark Matter cosmological model