2012/06/30 by Claes-Erik Rydberg, Erik Zackrisson, Peter Lundqvist +1 · 74 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysics #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #James Webb Space Telescope #Physics #Population #Star formation #Stars #Stellar population #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph.CO
paper · pdf · doi:10.1093/mnras/sts653
published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 429(4), 3658-3664 (Oxford University Press) · 8 pages, 6 figures, 1 table, published in MNRAS. The main change in version 2 is the inclusion of lower redshifts, down to 2. There was also one more SFR comparison model (Tornatore 2007) added
openalex publication_date 2013/01/17 · arxiv created 2013/01/24 · arxiv updated 2013/08/02 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
The first Population III stars are predicted to form in minihaloes at z ≈ 10–30. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), tentatively scheduled for launch in 2018, will probably be able to detect some of the first galaxies, but whether it will also be able to detect the first stars remains more doubtful. Here, we explore the prospects of detecting an isolated Population III star or a small cluster of Population III stars down to z = 2 in either lensed or unlensed fields. Our calculations are based on realistic stellar atmospheres and take into account the potential flux contribution from the surrounding H ii region. We find that unlensed Population III stars are beyond the reach of JWST, and that even lensed Population III stars will be extremely difficult to detect. However, the main problem with the latter approach is not necessarily that the lensed stars are too faint, but that their surface number densities are too low. To detect even one 60 M⊙ Population III star when pointing JWST through the galaxy cluster MACS J0717.5+3745, the lensing cluster with the largest Einstein radius detected so far, the cosmic star formation rate of Population III stars would need to be approximately an order of magnitude higher than predicted by the most optimistic current models.