The DAWN JWST Archive: A spectroscopically-informed population study of the physical properties of galaxies at z>2
astro-ph.GA
Submitted: 2026-10-11
Updated: 2026-10-11
Comments: 23 pages, 15 figures, submitted to Astronomy and Astrophysics (A&A)
Code: https://github.com/gbrammer/grizli
Project page: https://dawn-cph.github.io/dja
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
The gist: Charting the evolution of star-formation, stellar mass and dust build-up over cosmic time relies on the accurate characterisation of the stellar population properties of high redshift galaxies.
Abstract
Charting the evolution of star-formation, stellar mass and dust build-up over cosmic time relies on the accurate characterisation of the stellar population properties of high redshift galaxies. We present a catalogue of spectroscopically derived physical properties for 12,000 galaxies at z>2, with archival JWST/NIRSpec PRISM spectroscopy and JWST/NIRCam imaging from the DAWN JWST Archive. We present a custom version of the SED fitting code BAGPIPES, used to perform joint spectrophotometric modelling of PRISM spectra and broadband NIRCam photometry. In doing so, we publicly release a science-ready catalogue of the physical properties of galaxies beyond cosmic noon. We report key physical properties, such as stellar masses, star-formation rates (SFR) and timescales, and V-band dust attenuation (Av). We further probe the recent star-formation histories (SFH) of galaxies via their SFRs on 3 Myr, 10 Myr, and 100 Myr timescales, capturing both rising and falling recent SFHs. Through dust-corrected ugi colour-colour diagrams of massive galaxies, we show how quiescent and dusty galaxies populate this colour space at z>2, with galaxies experiencing a recent downturn in star-formation occupying distinct parameter space. We also study the dustiest galaxies in our sample, showing that they are preferentially more massive and strongly star-forming relative to the parent sample, residing on the high-mass end of the star-forming main-sequence. The slope of the attenuation curve has a strong dependence on Av, varying from steep to shallow as the dust attenuation increases and the specific star-formation rate decreases. Our findings show that the unparalleled number statistics of this catalogue of spectroscopically derived stellar population properties uniquely enables the study star-formation, quenching and dust properties of galaxies from cosmic noon to cosmic dawn.
Sources
- Confirmation and refutation of very luminous galaxies in the early universe
- The abundance and nature of high-redshift quiescent galaxies from JADES spectroscopy and the FLAMINGO simulations
- Quiescent or dusty? Unveiling the nature of extremely red galaxies at $z>3$
- The JWST UNCOVER Treasury survey: Ultradeep NIRSpec and NIRCam ObserVations before the Epoch of Reionization
- JADES: Evolution of nitrogen abundances in star-forming galaxies from z 1.5-7
- Massive Galaxies Form Early and Gray: Stellar Assembly and Dust Attenuation at $\mathbf{z>3.5}$ from CAPERS
- RUBIES: a complete census of the bright and red distant Universe with JWST/NIRSpec
- Little Red Dots host Black Hole Stars: A unified family of gas-reddened AGN revealed by JWST/NIRSpec spectroscopy
- Efficient formation of a massive quiescent galaxy at redshift 4.9
- JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES) Data Release 5: stellar population catalogue for galaxies in GOODS-N and GOODS-S
- Overview of the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES)
- COSMOS2020: Exploring the dawn of quenching for massive galaxies at 3 < z < 5 with a new colour selection method
- JWST spectroscopy of galaxies at z>10: Damped Ly alpha absorbers reveal efficient star formation and hidden redshift biases
- DeepDive: A deep dive into the physics of the first massive quiescent galaxies in the Universe
- ECOGAL I. Project design and the first catalogue
- A recently quenched galaxy 700 million years after the Big Bang
- Big, Dusty Galaxies in Blue Jay: Insights into the Relationship Between Morphology and Dust Attenuation at Cosmic Noon
- SCUBADive II: Searching for $z>4$ Dust-Obscured Galaxies via F150W-Dropouts in COSMOS-Web
- Little Red Dots: an abundant population of faint AGN at z~5 revealed by the EIGER and FRESCO JWST surveys
- MINERVA: A NIRCam Medium Band and MIRI Imaging Survey to Unlock the Hidden Gems of the Distant Universe
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