High-z galaxies with the JWST and the ELT: Toward Ever-finer Detail
Abstract
The exploration of the early Universe is being transformed by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which delivers unprecedented angular resolution at infrared wavelengths and opens a unique window redward of the K band (2um). Thanks to NIRCam, NIRISS, NIRSpec, and MIRI instruments, which provide both imaging and spectroscopy with exquisite efficiency, new classes of sources have emerged within the first years of operations. The first half-Gyr of cosmic time is now routinely probed, revealing massive blue/red galaxies and a population of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) appearing as "little red dots" together with a rest-frame near-infrared/optical view of sources across the reionization and post-reionization epochs. Angular resolution will remain pivotal in the 2030s - 2040s, when extreme adaptive optics (AO) facilities will be deployed on both (8 - 10)m (e.g., the VLT Multi-Conjugate-Adaptive-Optics (MCAO) - Assisted Visible Imager and Spectrograph, MAVIS) and on extremely large telescopes, like the 39m ELT (e.g., Multi-conjugate adaptive Optics Relay For ELT Observation, MORFEO). Operating at the diffraction limit, these facilities will improve JWST's resolution, with ELT achieving a factor of ~ 6 smaller Point-Spread-Function (PSF). An ELT diffraction-limited PSF (with a Full Width Half Maximum, FWHM ~ 8-12 mas) in the near infrared will resolve spatial scales <100 pc at any redshift (z ~< 18), revealing abundant star-forming clumps with sufficient sensitivity. Leveraging gravitational lensing as a cosmic telescope, even with moderate magnification factors (mu ~ 4-8), diffraction-limited 8m and 39m telescopes will probe physical scales ~< 25 pc, enabling systematic studies of star formation down to star-cluster scale at cosmological distances. Such observations are poised to become routine in the 2030s - 2040s.
Related
- Tiny Galaxies, Mighty Nitrogen: Linking Chemical Anomalies to Compact Galaxies at High Redshift using JWST/JADES
- The JWST Ultramassive Galaxy Sample -- II. Supermassive Black Hole Masses for 8 Extreme Early-Type Galaxies via Jeans Anisotropic Modelling of High-Resolution Integral-Field NIRSpec Stellar Kinematics
- What Becomes of JWST/NIRCam-selected High-redshift Massive Galaxies?
- What becomes of JWST/NIRCam-selected high-redshift massive galaxies?
- Clustering-based halo mass assignment for high-redshift galaxies: method, validation, and application to JWST
BibTeX
@misc{vanzella2026highz,
title = {{High-z galaxies with the JWST and the ELT: Toward Ever-finer Detail}},
author = {Eros Vanzella},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.29072},
eprint = {2609.29072},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.29072},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - High-z galaxies with the JWST and the ELT: Toward Ever-finer Detail
AU - Eros Vanzella
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/24
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.29072
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.29072
AB - The exploration of the early Universe is being transformed by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which delivers unprecedented angular resolution at infrared wavelengths and opens a unique window redward of the K band (2um). Thanks to NIRCam, NIRISS, NIRSpec, and MIRI instruments, which provide both imaging and spectroscopy with exquisite efficiency, new classes of sources have emerged within the first years of operations. The first half-Gyr of cosmic time is now routinely probed, revealing massive blue/red galaxies and a population of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) appearing as "little red dots" together with a rest-frame near-infrared/optical view of sources across the reionization and post-reionization epochs. Angular resolution will remain pivotal in the 2030s - 2040s, when extreme adaptive optics (AO) facilities will be deployed on both (8 - 10)m (e.g., the VLT Multi-Conjugate-Adaptive-Optics (MCAO) - Assisted Visible Imager and Spectrograph, MAVIS) and on extremely large telescopes, like the 39m ELT (e.g., Multi-conjugate adaptive Optics Relay For ELT Observation, MORFEO). Operating at the diffraction limit, these facilities will improve JWST's resolution, with ELT achieving a factor of ~ 6 smaller Point-Spread-Function (PSF). An ELT diffraction-limited PSF (with a Full Width Half Maximum, FWHM ~ 8-12 mas) in the near infrared will resolve spatial scales <100 pc at any redshift (z ~< 18), revealing abundant star-forming clumps with sufficient sensitivity. Leveraging gravitational lensing as a cosmic telescope, even with moderate magnification factors (mu ~ 4-8), diffraction-limited 8m and 39m telescopes will probe physical scales ~< 25 pc, enabling systematic studies of star formation down to star-cluster scale at cosmological distances. Such observations are poised to become routine in the 2030s - 2040s.
ER -