TY - JOUR
T1 - The james webb space telescope north ecliptic pole time-domain field. I. Field selection of a JWST community field for time-domain studies
AU - Jansen, Rolf A.
AU - Windhorst, Rogier A.
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors acknowledge support from JWST grants NAG5- 12460, NNX14AN10G, and 80NSSC18K0200 from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)Goddard Space Flight Center(GSFC), and from grant HSTGO-15278.001-A from the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. (AURA) under NASA contract NAS 5-26555. We are grateful to the HST Project at NASA GSFC and STScI for implementing JWST parallels also for science observations.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018. The Astronomical Society of the Pacific. All rights reserved.
PY - 2018
Y1 - 2018
N2 - We describe the selection of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) North Ecliptic Pole (NEP) Time-domain Field (TDF), a ≳14′ diameter field located within JWST’s northern continuous viewing zone (CVZ) and centered at (R.A., decl.)J2000=(17:22:47.896, +65:49:21.54). We demonstrate that this is the only region in the sky where JWST can observe a clean (i.e., free of bright foreground stars and with low Galactic foreground extinction) extragalactic deep survey field of this size at arbitrary cadence or at arbitrary orientation, and without a penalty in terms of a raised zodiacal background. This will crucially enable a wide range of new and exciting time-domain science, including high-redshift transient searches and monitoring (e.g., SNe), variability studies from active galactic nuclei (AGNs) to brown dwarf atmospheres, as well as proper motions of possibly extreme scattered Kuiper Belt and Inner Oort Cloud Objects, and of nearby Galactic brown dwarfs, low-mass stars, and ultracool white dwarfs. A JWST/NIRCam+NIRISS GTO program will provide an initial 0.8–5.0 μm spectrophotometric characterization to mAB ∼ 28.8±0.3 mag of four orthogonal “spokes” within this field. The multi-wavelength (radio through X-ray) context of the field is in hand (ground-based near–UV-visible–near-IR), in progress (VLA 3 GHz, VLBA 5 GHz, HST UV-visible, Chandra X-ray, and IRAM 30 m 1.3 and 2 mm), or scheduled (JCMT 850 μm). We welcome and encourage ground-and space-based follow-up of the initial GTO observations and ancillary data, to realize its potential as an ideal JWST time-domain community field.
AB - We describe the selection of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) North Ecliptic Pole (NEP) Time-domain Field (TDF), a ≳14′ diameter field located within JWST’s northern continuous viewing zone (CVZ) and centered at (R.A., decl.)J2000=(17:22:47.896, +65:49:21.54). We demonstrate that this is the only region in the sky where JWST can observe a clean (i.e., free of bright foreground stars and with low Galactic foreground extinction) extragalactic deep survey field of this size at arbitrary cadence or at arbitrary orientation, and without a penalty in terms of a raised zodiacal background. This will crucially enable a wide range of new and exciting time-domain science, including high-redshift transient searches and monitoring (e.g., SNe), variability studies from active galactic nuclei (AGNs) to brown dwarf atmospheres, as well as proper motions of possibly extreme scattered Kuiper Belt and Inner Oort Cloud Objects, and of nearby Galactic brown dwarfs, low-mass stars, and ultracool white dwarfs. A JWST/NIRCam+NIRISS GTO program will provide an initial 0.8–5.0 μm spectrophotometric characterization to mAB ∼ 28.8±0.3 mag of four orthogonal “spokes” within this field. The multi-wavelength (radio through X-ray) context of the field is in hand (ground-based near–UV-visible–near-IR), in progress (VLA 3 GHz, VLBA 5 GHz, HST UV-visible, Chandra X-ray, and IRAM 30 m 1.3 and 2 mm), or scheduled (JCMT 850 μm). We welcome and encourage ground-and space-based follow-up of the initial GTO observations and ancillary data, to realize its potential as an ideal JWST time-domain community field.
KW - (cosmology:) dark ages
KW - (stars:) supernovae: general
KW - First stars
KW - Galaxies: active
KW - Galaxies: evolution
KW - Galaxies: high-redshift
KW - Reionization
KW - Surveys
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U2 - 10.1088/1538-3873/aae476
DO - 10.1088/1538-3873/aae476
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85057345981
SN - 0004-6280
VL - 130
JO - Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific
JF - Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific
IS - 994
M1 - 124001
ER -