ESA Science & Technology - A strategy to study First Light with JWST

Publication date: 16 October 2007

Authors: Stiavelli, M., et al.

Journal: JWST White Paper

Before addressing how JWST can detect "First Light" we need to define what we mean by such term. First light is the appearance of the first stars (Population III) or mini-AGNs in the Universe. JWST is incapable of detecting individual Population III stars directly but could detected them as SNae, thought to be ultra-bright pair instability SNae or, even, Gamma Ray Bursts. The recent detection of the superluminous SN2006gy of absolute magnitude -22 (Smith et al. 2007, astro-ph/0612617) and detectable to z=20 and beyond highlights the appeal of this approach as a very effective way to identify the location of very high-z objects.