Over the past few years, JWST's exquisite sensitivity, wavelength coverage and resolution have dramatically advanced observational studies of distant galaxies. Ground-based facilities have added to this complementary views from wide-area imaging, integral-field spectroscopy and (sub)-mm probes. In this talk, I will share recent discoveries on rapidly maturing galaxies from the first billion years of cosmic history to cosmic noon, the peak epoch of star formation. The rapid maturing of galaxies is expressed both in an efficient build-up of massive galaxies, especially in overdense environments, and in mature, Milky Way-like substructures of disks (bars, spirals) already seen at cosmic noon and beyond. In particular, I will also emphasize the importance of dust: the red-sensitive view offered by JWST enables to uncover and characterise previously missed populations and allows us to better address the internal structure of distant galaxies, from distributions of stars and star formation to their evolving star-dust geometry.
BIO
Prof Stijn Wuyts holds the Hiroko-Sherwin Chair in Extragalactic Astronomy at the University of Bath. He obtained his PhD from Leiden University on the topic of "Red Galaxies at High Redshift", worked on the interface between galaxy observations and simulations as a Keck Fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and observationally explored galaxy growth as a Junior Scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics. At the University of Bath, he combines tracers of stars, dust, ionised and cold gas to reveal the physics governing the build-up of stars within galaxies near and far, and the evolution of their structure through cosmic time.
Host: Junkai Zhang
