The Sparkler: Evolved High-redshift Globular Cluster Candidates Captured by JWST
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Using data from JWST, we analyse the compact sources (“sparkles”) located around a remarkable z spec = 1.378 galaxy (the ‘Sparkler) that is strongly gravitationally lensed by the z = 0.39 galaxy cluster SMACS J0723.3-7327. Several of these compact sources can be cross-identified in multiple images, making it clear that they are associated with the host galaxy. Combining data from JWSTs Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) with archival data from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), we perform 0.4–4.4 μ m photometry on these objects, finding several of them to be very red and consistent with the colors of quenched, old stellar systems. Morphological fits confirm that these red sources are spatially unresolved even in the strongly magnified JWST/NIRCam images, while the JWST/NIRISS spectra show [O iii ] λ 5007 emission in the body of the Sparkler but no indication of star formation in the red compact sparkles. The most natural interpretation of these compact red companions to the Sparkler is that they are evolved globular clusters seen at z = 1.378. Applying Dense Basis spectral energy distribution fitting to the sample, we infer formation redshifts of z form ∼ 7–11 for these globular cluster candidates, corresponding to ages of ∼3.9–4.1 Gyr at the epoch of observation and a formation time just ∼0.5 Gyr after the Big Bang. If confirmed with additional spectroscopy, these red, compact sparkles represent the first evolved globular clusters found at high redshift, which could be among the earliest observed objects to have quenched their star formation in the universe, and may open a new window into understanding globular cluster formation. Data and code to reproduce our results will be made available at http://canucs-jwst.com/sparkler.html .
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".