EPOCHS I. The Discovery and Star Forming Properties of Galaxies in the Epoch of Reionization at $6.5 < z < 18$ with PEARLS and Public JWST data

Understand

We present in this paper the discovery, properties, and a catalog of 1165 high redshift $6.5 < z < 18$ galaxies found in deep JWST NIRCam imaging from the GTO PEARLS survey combined with data from JWST public fields.

• We describe our bespoke homogeneous reduction process and our analysis of these areas including the NEP, CEERS, GLASS, NGDEEP, JADES, and ERO SMACS-0723 fields with over 214 arcmin$^{2}$ imaged to depths of $\sim 30$ mag.
• We describe our rigorous methods for identifying these galaxies, involving the use of Lyman-break strength, detection significance criteria, visual inspection, and integrated photometric redshifts probability distributions predominately at high redshift.
• Our sample is a robust and highly pure collection of distant galaxies from which we also remove brown dwarf stars, and calculate completeness and contamination from simulations.