Prof. Kevin Hainline (University of Arizona)

The James Webb Space Telescope is transforming our view of the infrared universe, from the first galaxies to the faint stellar populations in our own halo. In this talk I will present recent results from the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES) on a puzzling set of ultra-red, compact sources. These objects span a surprising range of origins: candidate galaxies at cosmic dawn, unusual active nuclei, and cool brown dwarfs in the thick disk and halo of the Milky Way. I will describe how these populations are identified, the ambiguities in distinguishing them, and what they reveal about both galaxy formation and the local low-mass stellar population. Particular emphasis will be on the most distant galaxies currently known, including JADES-GS-z14-0, while also highlighting how stellar interlopers and rare AGN complicate, but also enrich, the search for the earliest galaxies.