Princeton University Astrophysical Sciences 2024 Spitzer Lecturer

For roughly three decades, astronomers anticipated that the launch of JWST would portend new discoveries and the potential upending of long-held notions for early galaxy formation. JWST did not disappoint! Within weeks of the start of science operations, the discovery of abundant galaxy candidates beyond redshift z~10 (500 million years after the Big Bang), teased the possibility that very distant galaxies could be confirmed spectroscopically and studied in detail. In the fall of 2022, just months into JWST operations, galaxies beyond redshift z~12 (375 million years after Big Bang) were discovered in the JADES JWST/NIRcam imaging and their distances confirmed with JWST/NIRSpec spectroscopy. I will revisit these first results in the context of our knowledge of early galaxy formation before their discovery and in the year since, and talk about the series of serendipities that enabled these findings so early in the JWST mission.