A grand-design spiral galaxy 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang with JWST

Abstract

We report the discovery of Alaknanda, a large ($\sim 10$ kpc diameter), massive ($\log (M_{\star }/M_{\odot })\sim 10.2$), candidate grand-design spiral galaxy with photometric redshift $z_{phot}\sim 4.05$ in the UNCOVER and Medium band, Mega Science surveys with JWST. This is among the highest redshift spiral galaxies discovered with JWST. Our morphological analysis using GALFIT reveals that this galaxy is a well-formed disk, with two symmetric spiral arms that are clearly visible in the GALFIT residual. In the rest-frame near-UV and far-UV, we clearly see the beads-on-a-string pattern of star formation; in the rest-frame visible bands, each string appears as an arm. Spectral energy distribution modeling using the BAGPIPES and Prospector codes is strongly constrained by detections and flux measurements in 21 JWST and HST filters. From the BAGPIPES modeling, the stellar mass-weighted age is $\sim 199$ Myr, implying 50\% of the stars in the galaxy formed after $z\sim 4.6$. This is a highly star-forming galaxy with a star formation rate (SFR) of $\sim 63M_{\odot }{\text{yr}}^{-1}$. We detect flux excesses in the F250M and F335M filters due to the presence of H-$\alpha$+[NII] and [OIII]+H-$\beta$ emission line complexes respectively. Detection of a spiral galaxy at $z\sim 4$ indicates that massive and large spiral galaxies and disks were already in place merely 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang. Future observations with NIRSpec IFU and ALMA will be able to probe the kinematics of the galactic disk, throwing light on the possible origin of the spiral arms in this galaxy.

arXiv commentAccepted for publication in the journal of Astronomy & Astrophysics (A&A)

References in corpus (61)

• Stellar population synthesis at the resolution of 2003
• The Dust Content and Opacity of Actively Star-Forming Galaxies
• MultiNest: an efficient and robust Bayesian inference tool for cosmology and particle physics
• Detailed Structural Decomposition of Galaxy Images
• EAZY: A Fast, Public Photometric Redshift Code
• Detailed Decomposition of Galaxy Images. II. Beyond Axisymmetric Models
• A Simple Model for the Absorption of Starlight by Dust in Galaxies
• Multimodal nested sampling: an efficient and robust alternative to MCMC methods for astronomical data analysis
• X-ray spectral modelling of the AGN obscuring region in the CDFS: Bayesian model selection and catalogue
• A Cosmological Framework for the Co-Evolution of Quasars, Supermassive Black Holes, and Elliptical Galaxies: I. Galaxy Mergers & Quasar Activity
• The propagation of uncertainties in stellar population synthesis modeling III: model calibration, comparison, and evaluation
• Importance Nested Sampling and the MultiNest Algorithm
• The Relationship Between Stellar Light Distributions of Galaxies and their Formation Histories
• A New Non-Parametric Approach to Galaxy Morphological Classification
• Inferring the star-formation histories of massive quiescent galaxies with BAGPIPES: Evidence for multiple quenching mechanisms
• Stellar Population Inference with Prospector
• A Merger-Driven Scenario for Cosmological Disk Galaxy Formation
• Galaxy morphology to I=25 mag in the Hubble Deep Field
• The James Webb Space Telescope Mission
• The rapid formation a large rotating disk galaxy three billion years after the Big Bang
• The Evolution of Galaxy Mergers and Morphology at z<1.2 in the Extended Groth Strip
• Rapid formation of exponential disks and bulges at high redshift from the dynamical evolution of clump cluster and chain galaxies
• The optical morphologies of galaxies in the IllustrisTNG simulation: a comparison to Pan-STARRS observations
• Formation of a spiral galaxy in a major merger
• A New Approach to Galaxy Morphology: I. Analysis of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Early Data Release
• NIRCam Performance on JWST In Flight
• Structural and Photometric Classification of Galaxies - I. Calibration Based on a Nearby Galaxy Sample
• Resolved Galaxies in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field: Star Formation in Disks at High Redshift
• Dawes Review 4: Spiral Structures in Disc Galaxies
• On the mass function of star clusters
• Bulge and Clump Evolution in Hubble Ultra Deep Field Clump Clusters, Chains and Spiral Galaxies
• Clumpy Galaxies in CANDELS. I. The Definition of UV Clumps and the Fraction of Clumpy Galaxies at 0.5<z<3
• The propagation of uncertainties in stellar population synthesis modeling II: The challenge of comparing galaxy evolution models to observations
• The BlueTides Simulation: First Galaxies and Reionization
• Clumpy Galaxies in GOODS and GEMS: Massive Analogs of Local Dwarf Irregulars
• The Art of Measuring Physical Parameters in Galaxies: A Critical Assessment of Spectral Energy Distribution Fitting Techniques
• Noise Based Detection and Segmentation of Nebulous Objects
• Unstable disks at high redshift: Evidence for smooth accretion in galaxy formation
• CEERS Key Paper III: The Diversity of Galaxy Structure and Morphology at z=3-9 with JWST
• Panic! At the Disks: First Rest-frame Optical Observations of Galaxy Structure at $z>3$ with JWST in the SMACS 0723 Field
• UNCOVERing the extended strong lensing structures of Abell 2744 with the deepest JWST imaging
• Physical Properties of Tidal Features in Interacting Disk Galaxies
• Bars do drive spiral density waves
• JWST reveals a population of ultra-red, flattened disk galaxies at 2<z<6 previously missed by HST
• Spiral morphology in an intensely star-forming disk galaxy more than 12 billion years ago
• High Velocity Dispersion in A Rare Grand Design Spiral Galaxy at Redshift z=2.18
• Morpheus Reveals Distant Disk Galaxy Morphologies with JWST: The First AI/ML Analysis of JWST Images
• A Milky Way-like barred spiral galaxy at a redshift of 3
• The Onset of Spiral Structure in the Universe
• Slowly Breaking Waves: The Longevity of Tidally Induced Spiral Structure
• The UNCOVER Survey: A First-look HST+JWST Catalog of Galaxy Redshifts and Stellar Population Properties Spanning $0.2\lesssim z\lesssim 15$
• Early results from GLASS-JWST XIV: A first morphological atlas of the 1 < z < 5 Universe in the rest-frame optical
• The formation of Milky Way-mass disk galaxies in the first 500 million years of a cold dark matter universe
• Spatially resolved dust properties and quasar-galaxy decomposition of a HyLIRG at z = 4.4
• The most ancient spiral galaxy: a 2.6-Gyr-old disk with a tranquil velocity field
• Observations of the Initial Formation and Evolution of Spiral galaxies at $1<z<3$ in the CANDELS fields
• J0107a: A Barred Spiral Dusty Star-forming Galaxy at $z=2.467$
• PANORAMIC: Discovery of an Ultra-Massive Grand-Design Spiral Galaxy at $z\sim 5.2$
• A Giant Disk Galaxy Two Billion Years After The Big Bang
• A Diverse Population of z ~ 2 ULIRGs Revealed by JWST Imaging
• Rest-frame UV versus optical morphologies of galaxies using Sersic profile fitting: the importance of morphological K-correction

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Transforming galaxies with EASE: widespread structural changes enabled by short-lived spirals
• Evolution of Size, Mass, and Density of Galaxies Since Cosmic Dawn
• VENUS: Strong-lensing model of MACS J1931.8-2635 -- revealing the farthest multiply imaged supernova