Galaxy morphology from z ∼ 6 through the lens of JWST

Context. The James Webb Space Telescope's (JWST's) unprecedented combination of sensitivity, spatial resolution, and infrared coverage has enabled a new era of galaxy morphology exploration across most of cosmic history. Aims. We analyze the near-infrared (NIR similar to 0.8-1 mu m) rest-frame morphologies of galaxies with log M-*/M-circle dot > 9 in the redshift range of 0 < z < 6, compare with previous HST-based results and release the first JWST-based morphological catalog of similar to 20 000 galaxies in the CEERS survey. Methods. We classified the galaxies in our sample into four main broad classes: spheroid, disk+spheroid, disk, and disturbed, based on imaging with four filters: F150W, F200W, F356W, and F444W. We used convolutional neural networks (CNNs) trained on HST/WFC3 labeled images and domain-adapted to JWST/NIRCam. Results. We find that similar to 90% and similar to 75% of galaxies at z < 3 have the same early and late and regular and irregular classification, respectively, in JWST and HST imaging when considering similar wavelengths. For small (large) and faint objects, JWST-based classifications tend to systematically present less bulge-dominated systems (peculiar galaxies) than HST-based ones, but the impact on the reported evolution of morphological fractions is less than similar to 10%. Using JWST-based morphologies at the same rest-frame wavelength (similar to 0.8-1 mu m), we confirm an increase in peculiar galaxies and a decrease in bulge-dominated galaxies with redshift, as reported in previous HST-based works, suggesting that the stellar mass distribution, in addition to light distribution, is more disturbed in the early Universe. However, we find that undisturbed disk-like systems already dominate the high-mass end of the late-type galaxy population (log M-*/M-circle dot > 10.5) at z similar to 5, and bulge-dominated galaxies also exist at these early epochs, confirming a rich and evolved morphological diversity of galaxies similar to 1 Gyr after the Big Bang. Finally, we find that the morphology-quenching relation is already in place for massive galaxies at z > 3, with massive quiescent galaxies (log M-*/M-circle dot > 10.5) being predominantly bulge-dominated.