JWST's PEARLS: Transients in the MACS J0416.1−2403 Field

Abstract

With its unprecedented sensitivity and spatial resolution, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has opened a new window for time-domain discoveries in the infrared. Here we report observations in the only field that has received four epochs (spanning 126 days) of JWST NIRCam observations in Cycle 1. This field is toward MACS J0416.1−2403, which is a rich galaxy cluster at redshift z = 0.4 and is one of the Hubble Frontier Fields. We have discovered 14 transients from these data. Twelve of these transients happened in three galaxies (with z = 0.94, 1.01, and 2.091) crossing a lensing caustic of the cluster, and these transients are highly magnified by gravitational lensing. These 12 transients are likely of a similar nature to those previously reported based on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) data in this field, i.e., individual stars in the highly magnified arcs. However, these 12 could not have been found by HST because they were too red and too faint. The other two transients are associated with background galaxies (z = 2.205 and 0.7093) that are only moderately magnified, and they are likely supernovae. They indicate a demagnified supernova surface density, when monitored at a time cadence of a few months to a ∼3–4 μm survey limit of AB ∼28.5 mag, of ∼0.5 arcmin−2 integrated to z ≈ 2. This survey depth is beyond the capability of HST but can be easily reached by JWST.

Under Einstein’s Microscope: Measuring Properties of Individual Rotating Massive Stars from Extragalactic Microcaustic Crossings

“…Searching for variability using the imaging difference technique, the Flashlight program recently detected a dozen highly magnified stars from this redshift range when the imaging limiting magnitude with HST in the optical improves from 28 to 30 (Kelly et al 2022). James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) NIRCam imaging with the PEARLS program uncovered that redder magnified stars are commonly detected at infrared wavelengths at a magnitude limit 28.5-30 (Yan et al 2023). Several intriguing magnified star candidates have been reported in more distant lensed galaxies at z ; 2-6 (Welch et al 2022a(Welch et al , 2022bDiego et al 2023aDiego et al , 2023bMeena et al 2023), including quite bright objects (Vanzella et al 2020;Diego et al 2022).…”