30 Years of High-Redshift Star Formation with the JCMT

by Prof. Amy Barger (University of Wisconsin–Madison)

Thursday Mar 27, 2025, 3:30 PM → 5:30 PM Pacific/Honolulu

Room 112 (Watanabe Hall)

The majority of light from cosmic star formation is absorbed by dust and re-radiated into the far-infrared (FIR). Since their discovery with the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope in the late 1990s, the most luminous high-redshift FIR galaxies have been heavily studied using single-dish sub millimeter telescopes, but the bulk of the FIR light is in galaxies that are too faint to be seen this way. I will discuss why mapping the FIR emission in fainter galaxies has been a difficult problem and how, through the powerful combination of JCMT, Atacama Millimeter/sub millimeter Array (ALMA), and JWST, we may be coming close to a solution. I will also discuss how dusty, star-forming galaxies fit into the broader context of galaxy evolution, and how they relate to other populations discovered with JWST.

video - Prof. A. Barger