TY - JOUR
T1 - JADES and SAPPHIRES: Galaxy Metamorphosis Amidst a Huge, Luminous Emission-line Region
AU - D'Eugenio, Francesco
AU - Helton, Jakob M.
AU - Hainline, Kevin
AU - Sun, Fengwu
AU - Maiolino, Roberto
AU - Pérez-González, Pablo G.
AU - Juodžbalis, Ignas
AU - Arribas, Santiago
AU - Bunker, Andrew J.
AU - Carniani, Stefano
AU - Curtis-Lake, Emma
AU - Egami, Eiichi
AU - Eisenstein, Daniel J.
AU - Johnson, Benjamin D.
AU - Robertson, Brant
AU - Tacchella, Sandro
AU - Willmer, Christopher N. A.
AU - Willott, Chris
AU - Baker, William M.
AU - Danhaive, A. Lola
AU - Duan, Qiao
AU - Fudamoto, Yoshinobu
AU - Jones, Gareth C.
AU - Lin, Xiaojing
AU - Liu, Weizhe
AU - Perna, Michele
AU - Puskás, Dávid
AU - Rinaldi, Pierluigi
AU - Scholtz, Jan
AU - Sun, Yang
AU - Trussler, James A. A.
AU - Übler, Hannah
AU - Venturi, Giacomo
AU - Williams, Christina C.
AU - Zhu, Yongda
N1 - © The Author(s) 2025. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal Astronomical Society. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
PY - 2025/9/30
Y1 - 2025/9/30
N2 - We report the discovery of a remarkably large and luminous line-emitting nebula extending on either side of the Balmer-break galaxy JADES-GS-518794 at, detected with James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)/NIRCam imaging in [O iii]4959, 5007 and H α and spectroscopically confirmed with NIRCam/wide-field slitless spectroscopy, thanks to the pure-parallel programme Slitless Areal Pure Parallel HIgh-Redshift Emission Survey. The end-to-end velocity offset is. Nebulae with such large sizes and high luminosities (25 pkpc diameter,) are routinely observed around bright quasars, unlike JADES-GS-518794. With a stellar mass of, this galaxy is at the knee of the mass function at. Its star formation rate declined for some time (10-100 Myr prior to observation), followed by a recent (10 Myr) upturn. This system is part of a candidate large-scale galaxy overdensity, with an excess of Balmer-break galaxies compared to the field (3σ). We discuss the possible origin of this nebula as material from a merger or gas expelled by an active galactic nucleus (AGN). The symmetry of the nebula, its bubble-like morphology, kinematics, high luminosity, and the extremely high equivalent width of [O iii] together favour the AGN interpretation. Intriguingly, there may be a physical connection between the presence of such a large, luminous nebula and the possible metamorphosis of the central galaxy towards quenching.
AB - We report the discovery of a remarkably large and luminous line-emitting nebula extending on either side of the Balmer-break galaxy JADES-GS-518794 at, detected with James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)/NIRCam imaging in [O iii]4959, 5007 and H α and spectroscopically confirmed with NIRCam/wide-field slitless spectroscopy, thanks to the pure-parallel programme Slitless Areal Pure Parallel HIgh-Redshift Emission Survey. The end-to-end velocity offset is. Nebulae with such large sizes and high luminosities (25 pkpc diameter,) are routinely observed around bright quasars, unlike JADES-GS-518794. With a stellar mass of, this galaxy is at the knee of the mass function at. Its star formation rate declined for some time (10-100 Myr prior to observation), followed by a recent (10 Myr) upturn. This system is part of a candidate large-scale galaxy overdensity, with an excess of Balmer-break galaxies compared to the field (3σ). We discuss the possible origin of this nebula as material from a merger or gas expelled by an active galactic nucleus (AGN). The symmetry of the nebula, its bubble-like morphology, kinematics, high luminosity, and the extremely high equivalent width of [O iii] together favour the AGN interpretation. Intriguingly, there may be a physical connection between the presence of such a large, luminous nebula and the possible metamorphosis of the central galaxy towards quenching.
KW - astro-ph.GA
U2 - 10.1093/mnras/staf1138
DO - 10.1093/mnras/staf1138
M3 - Article
SN - 0035-8711
VL - 542
SP - 960
EP - 981
JO - Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS)
JF - Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS)
IS - 2
ER -