J/ApJ/947/20ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/947/20doi:10.26093/cds/vizier.19470020CDSValentino F.Brammer G.Gould K.M.L.Kokorev V.Fujimoto S.,Jespersen C.K.Vijayan A.P.Weaver J.R.Ito K.Tanaka M.Ilbert O.,Magdis G.E.Whitaker K.E.Faisst A.L.Gallazzi A.Gillman S.,Gimenez-Arteaga C.Gomez-Guijarro C.Kubo M.Heintz K.E.,Hirschmann M.Oesch P.Onodera M.Rizzo F.Lee M.Strait V.Toft S.2026-02-10T20:05:40Z2025-06-18T14:12:49ZCDS support team

CDS, Observatoire de Strasbourg, 11 rue de l'Universite, F-67000 Strasbourg, France

cds-question@unistra.frgalaxiesphotometryredshiftedtwo-color-diagramsvisible-astronomyinfrared-astronomyWe present the results of a systematic search for candidate quiescent galaxies in the distant universe in 11 JWST fields with publicly available observations collected during the first 3 months of operations and covering an effective sky area of ~145arcmin^2^. We homogeneously reduce the new JWST data and combine them with existing observations from the Hubble Space Telescope. We select a robust sample of ~80 candidate quiescent and quenching galaxies at 3<z<5 using two methods: (1) based on their rest-frame UVJ colors, and (2) a novel quantitative approach based on Gaussian mixture modeling of the near-UV-U, U-V, and V-J rest-frame color space, which is more sensitive to recently quenched objects. We measure comoving number densities of massive (M_*_>=10^10.6^M_{sun}_) quiescent galaxies consistent with previous estimates relying on ground-based observations, after homogenizing the results in the literature with our mass and redshift intervals. However, we find significant field-to-field variations of the number densities up to a factor of 2-3, highlighting the effect of cosmic variance and suggesting the presence of overdensities of red quiescent galaxies at z>3, as could be expected for highly clustered massive systems. Importantly, JWST enables the robust identification of quenching/quiescent galaxy candidates at lower masses and higher redshifts than before, challenging standard formation scenarios.2023ApJ...947...20Vhttps://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/ApJ/947/20CatalogResearchIsServedByTAP VizieR generic serviceIsServedByConesearch servicerelated-toVII/233 : 2MASS All-Sky Extended Source Catalog (XSC) (IPAC/UMass, 2003-2006)II/319 : UKIDSS-DR9 LAS, GCS and DXS Surveys (Lawrence+ 2012)I/355 : Gaia DR3 Part 1. Main source (Gaia Collaboration, 2022)J/AJ/131/1184 : A recalibration of optical phot. (Maiz-Apellaniz+, 2006)J/ApJS/206/8 : COSMOS/UltraVISTA Ks-selected catalogs v4.1 (Muzzin+, 2013)J/ApJS/214/24 : 3D-HST+CANDELS catalog (Skelton+, 2014)J/ApJS/222/1 : Faint ALMA 1.2mm sources down to ~0.02mJy (Fujimoto+, 2016)J/ApJS/225/27 : 3D-HST Survey: grism spectra master cat. (Momcheva+, 2016)J/MNRAS/465/1789 : SCUBA-2 Cosmology Legacy Survey (Geach+, 2017)J/MNRAS/464/3369 : SCUBA-2 EGS deep field (Zavala+, 2017)J/ApJS/235/36 : SPLASH-SXDF multi-wavelength photometric cat. (Mehta+, 2018)J/A+A/618/A85 : Spectroscopy of 3<z<4 quiescent galaxies (Schreiber+ 2018)J/A+A/611/A22 : Jekyll & Hyde galaxies ALMA cube & sp. (Schreiber+, 2018)J/ApJ/884/85 : RELICS: Reionization Lensing Cluster Survey (Coe+, 2019)J/MNRAS/490/3309 : Massive passive galaxies at the Cosmic Dawn (Merlin+, 2019)J/MNRAS/487/4648 : ALMA survey of the SCUBA-2 UKIDSS/UDS field (Stach+, 2019)J/MNRAS/496/695 : Timing the earliest quenching events (Carnall+, 2020)J/MNRAS/494/3828 : ALMA survey of SCUBA-2 CLS UDS field (Dudzeviciute+, 2020)J/ApJ/889/189 : Brightest high-z galaxies in RELICS clusters (Salmon+, 2020)J/ApJ/897/44 : 3<=z<=5 galaxies cand. in CANDELS fields (Shahidi+, 2020)J/ApJS/258/11 : The COSMOS2020 catalog (Weaver+, 2022)https://cds.unistra.fr/vizier-org/licences_vizier.htmlhttps://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/ApJ/947/20https://vizier.iucaa.in/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/ApJ/947/20http://vizieridia.saao.ac.za/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/ApJ/947/20https://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/votable?-source=J/ApJ/947/20https://vizier.iucaa.in/viz-bin/votable?-source=J/ApJ/947/20http://vizieridia.saao.ac.za/viz-bin/votable?-source=J/ApJ/947/20GETtext/xml+votablehttps://tapvizier.cds.unistra.fr/TAPVizieR/tapCone search capability for table J/ApJ/947/20/uvjgal (UVJ-selected galaxies; see Section 3.1 (eazy_output_v4.0_uvj_selection_3.0z6.5_robust.fits))https://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/conesearch/J/ApJ/947/20/uvjgal?https://vizier.iucaa.in/viz-bin/conesearch/J/ApJ/947/20/uvjgal?http://vizieridia.saao.ac.za/viz-bin/conesearch/J/ApJ/947/20/uvjgal?GETtext/xml+votable180.050000true214.9257549152.9185267250.005555555555555556Cone search capability for table J/ApJ/947/20/gmmrob (*NUV-U, U-V, V-J Gaussian mixture model (GMM) selected galaxies; truly passive (P_Q,50%_>=0.7); see Section 3.2)https://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/conesearch/J/ApJ/947/20/gmmrob?https://vizier.iucaa.in/viz-bin/conesearch/J/ApJ/947/20/gmmrob?http://vizieridia.saao.ac.za/viz-bin/conesearch/J/ApJ/947/20/gmmrob?GETtext/xml+votable180.050000true214.90484780652.9353502360.005555555555555556Cone search capability for table J/ApJ/947/20/gmmprob (*NUV-U, U-V, V-J Gaussian mixture model selected galaxies with 0.1<=P_Q,50%_<0.7; see Section 3.2)https://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/conesearch/J/ApJ/947/20/gmmprob?https://vizier.iucaa.in/viz-bin/conesearch/J/ApJ/947/20/gmmprob?http://vizieridia.saao.ac.za/viz-bin/conesearch/J/ApJ/947/20/gmmprob?GETtext/xml+votable180.050000true338.99140133.8971190.005555555555555556Cone search capability for table J/ApJ/947/20/match (selected by Carnall+ 2023MNRAS.520.3974C; (eazy_output_match_carnall_2022_brammer_v4.0_new.fits) see Appendix B.4.)https://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/conesearch/J/ApJ/947/20/match?https://vizier.iucaa.in/viz-bin/conesearch/J/ApJ/947/20/match?http://vizieridia.saao.ac.za/viz-bin/conesearch/J/ApJ/947/20/match?GETtext/xml+votable180.050000true214.80817038552.8322126940.0055555555555555566/9490 11425 11608 13511 16486 17518 17690 26342 34026 37395https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/moc/J/ApJ/947/20?format=asciiOpticalInfrareddefaultJ/ApJ/947/20/uvjgalUVJ-selected galaxies; see Section 3.1 (eazy_output_v4.0_uvj_selection_3.0z6.5_robust.fits)recnoRecord number assigned by the VizieR team. Should Not be used for identification.meta.recordintID[128/50654] Identifier (id)meta.id;meta.mainintRAJ2000Right ascension (J2000) (ra)degpos.eq.ra;meta.mainDEJ2000Declination (J2000) (dec)degpos.eq.dec;meta.mainzphot[2.4/5.6] Photometric redshift (z_phot)src.redshift.photdoubleSimbadSimbad column added by the CDSmeta.ref.urlcharFlag[UVJ] Flag (flag_selection)meta.code.errorcharFieldField identifier (field) (G1)meta.id;obs.fieldcharlogMs[8.4/11.7] log of stellar mass (logMstar)log(solMass)phys.massfloatStrict[0/1] "strict" sample (Strict) (1)meta.codeintPadded[0/1] "padded" sample (Padded) (1)meta.codeintStd[0/1] "standard" sample (Standard) (1)meta.codeintsw_thumbURL of the grizli SW cutout image (sw_thumb) (G2)meta.ref.urlcharlw_thumbURL of the grizli LW cutout image (lw_thumb) (G2)meta.ref.urlcharsedFileFile name of the image in the subdirectory "sed_uvj" (sed)meta.id;meta.filecharUVJFile name of the position in the UVJ diagram image (UVJ)meta.id;pos;meta.filecharJ/ApJ/947/20/gmmrob*NUV-U, U-V, V-J Gaussian mixture model (GMM) selected galaxies; truly passive (P_Q,50%_>=0.7); see Section 3.2SimbadSimbad column added by the CDSmeta.ref.urlcharID[185/49721] Identifier (id)meta.id;meta.mainintrecnoRecord number assigned by the VizieR team. Should Not be used for identification.meta.recordintRAJ2000Right ascension (J2000) (ra)degpos.eq.ra;meta.mainDEJ2000Declination (J2000) (dec)degpos.eq.dec;meta.mainzphot[2.6/4.7] Photometric redshift (z_phot)src.redshift.photdoubleFlag[NUVUVJ] Flag (flag_selection)meta.code.errorcharFieldField identifier (field) (G1)meta.id;obs.fieldcharlogMs[8.5/11.4] Log of stellar mass (logMstar)log(solMass)phys.massfloatpQ16[0/0.93] Probability of being quiescent, P_Q_, 16th percentile (pq_16)stat.probabilityfloatpQ50[0.1/0.98] Probability of being quiescent, P_Q_, 50th percentile (pq_50)stat.probabilityfloatpQ84[0.1/0.99] Probability of being quiescent, P_Q_, 84th percentile (pq_84)stat.probabilityfloatpQnom[0.1/1] Nominal probability of being quiescent, P_Q_ (pq_nominal)stat.probabilityfloatsw_thumbURL of the grizli SW cutout image (sw_thumb) (G2)meta.ref.urlcharlw_thumbURL of the grizli LW cutout image (lw_thumb) (G2)meta.ref.urlcharsedFileFile name of the image in the subdirectory "sed_nuvuvj" (sed)meta.id;meta.filecharNUVUVJFile name of the position in the NUVUVJ diagram image (NUVUVJ)meta.id;pos;meta.filecharJ/ApJ/947/20/gmmprob*NUV-U, U-V, V-J Gaussian mixture model selected galaxies with 0.1<=P_Q,50%_<0.7; see Section 3.2logMs[8.5/11.4] Log of stellar mass (logMstar)log(solMass)phys.massfloatpQ16[0/0.93] Probability of being quiescent, P_Q_, 16th percentile (pq_16)stat.probabilityfloatpQ50[0.1/0.98] Probability of being quiescent, P_Q_, 50th percentile (pq_50)stat.probabilityfloatpQ84[0.1/0.99] Probability of being quiescent, P_Q_, 84th percentile (pq_84)stat.probabilityfloatpQnom[0.1/1] Nominal probability of being quiescent, P_Q_ (pq_nominal)stat.probabilityfloatsw_thumbURL of the grizli SW cutout image (sw_thumb) (G2)meta.ref.urlcharlw_thumbURL of the grizli LW cutout image (lw_thumb) (G2)meta.ref.urlcharsedFileFile name of the image in the subdirectory "sed_nuvuvj" (sed)meta.id;meta.filecharNUVUVJFile name of the position in the NUVUVJ diagram image (NUVUVJ)meta.id;pos;meta.filecharSimbadSimbad column added by the CDSmeta.ref.urlcharrecnoRecord number assigned by the VizieR team. Should Not be used for identification.meta.recordintID[185/49721] Identifier (id)meta.id;meta.mainintRAJ2000Right ascension (J2000) (ra)degpos.eq.ra;meta.mainDEJ2000Declination (J2000) (dec)degpos.eq.dec;meta.mainzphot[2.6/4.7] Photometric redshift (z_phot)src.redshift.photdoubleFlag[NUVUVJ] Flag (flag_selection)meta.code.errorcharFieldField identifier (field) (G1)meta.id;obs.fieldcharJ/ApJ/947/20/matchselected by Carnall+ 2023MNRAS.520.3974C; (eazy_output_match_carnall_2022_brammer_v4.0_new.fits) see Appendix B.4.SimbadSimbad column added by the CDSmeta.ref.urlcharrecnoRecord number assigned by the VizieR team. Should Not be used for identification.meta.recordintID[2718/15782] Identifier (id)meta.id;meta.mainintRAJ2000Right ascension (J2000) (ra)degpos.eq.ra;meta.mainDEJ2000Declination (J2000) (dec)degpos.eq.dec;meta.mainzphot[3.1/5] Photometric redshift (z_phot)src.redshift.photdoublelogMs[9.86/11.4] Log of stellar mass (logMstar)log(solMass)phys.massfloatpQ16Probability of being quiescent, P_Q_, 16th percentile (pq_16)stat.probabilitydoublepQ50Probability of being quiescent, P_Q_, 50th percentile (pq_50)stat.probabilitydoublepQ84Probability of being quiescent, P_Q_, 84th percentile (pq_84)stat.probabilitydoublepQnomNominal probability of being quiescent, P_Q_ (pq_nominal)stat.probabilitydouble[CMM2023][17318/101962] Carnall+ 2023MNRAS.520.3974C (C23) identifier (id_carnall)meta.id.crossintzphotC23[3.2/4.8] C23 photometric redshift (zphot_carnall)src.redshift.photfloatlogMsC23[9.79/11.31] C23 log of stellar mass (logMstar_carnall)log(solMass)phys.massfloatRobC23[0/1] C23 robust sample (robust_carnall)src.sampleintsw_thumbURL of the grizli SW cutout image (sw_thumb) (G1)meta.ref.urlcharlw_thumbURL of the grizli LW cutout image (lw_thumb) (G1)meta.ref.urlcharsedFileFile name of the image in the subdirectory "sed_c22" (sed)meta.id;meta.filecharNUVUVJFile name of the position in the NUVUVJ diagram image (NUVUVJ)meta.id;pos;meta.filechar