DAWN JWST Archive: Morphology from profile fitting of over 340 000 galaxies in major JWST fields
Understanding how galaxies assemble their structure and evolve morphologically over cosmic time is a central goal of galaxy evolution studies. In particular, the morphological evolution of quiescent and star-forming galaxies provides key insights into the mechanisms that regulate star formation and quenching. We present a new catalog of morphological measurements for more than 340 000 sources spanning 0 < z < 12, derived from deep JWST NIRCam imaging across four major extragalactic fields (CEERS, PRIMER–UDS, PRIMER–COSMOS, GOODS) compiled in the DAWN JWST Archive (DJA). We performed two-dimensional surface brightness fitting for all galaxies in a uniform, flux-limited sample. Each galaxy was modeled with both a Sérsic profile and a two-component (bulge and disk) decomposition, yielding consistent structural parameters, including effective radius, Sérsic index ( n S ), axis ratio, and bulge-to-total ratio ( B / T ). To demonstrate the scientific application of our morphology catalogs, we combined these measurements with DJA photometric redshifts, physical parameters and rest-frame colors, and investigated the relation between total, bulge, and disk sizes, n S , star formation activity, and redshift. Bulge-dominated galaxies (high n S and B / T ) predominantly occupy the quiescent region of the UVJ diagram, while disk-dominated galaxies are mostly star-forming. A significant bimodality persists, with quiescent disks and compact, bulge-dominated star-forming galaxies observed out to z > 3. Quiescent galaxies also show significantly higher stellar mass surface densities, nearly an order of magnitude greater at z ~ 4 than at z ~ 1. Our results confirm a strong and evolving link between morphology and star formation activity and support a scenario in which bulge growth and quenching are closely connected. This work is a highly valuable addition to the DJA, adding a morphological dimension to this rich dataset and thus enabling a wider scientific application.
Authors
- Francesco Valentino (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6477-4011)
- Jasleen Matharu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7547-3385)
- Marko Shuntov (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7087-0701)
- G. Magdis (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4872-2294)
- Pascal A. Oesch (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5851-6649)
- Gabriel Brammer (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2680-005X)
- Sune Toft (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3631-7176)
- Kei Ito (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9453-0381)
- Natalie Allen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9610-7950)
- Aurélien Genin (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0005-0653-477X)
Institutions
- University of Geneva (CH)
- University of Copenhagen (DK)
- École Polytechnique (FR)
- Technical University of Denmark (DK)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Astronomy and Astrophysics
- Published
- 2025-06-19
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202555504
- Citations
- 5
- Primary Topic
- Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 5.77