Tracing the first galaxies with the James Webb Space Telescope

I will start with presenting new results on the stellar populations of galaxies at a redshift of z=9-11, when the universe was only a few hundred million years old. By combining Hubble Space Telescope observations with Spitzer imaging data, I will show how challenging it is currently to measure basic physical properties of these objects such as star-formation rates, stellar masses and stellar ages. In particular, the current measurements greatly depend on the assumptions (priors) for the spectral energy distribution modeling. Finally, I will discuss how the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will revolutionize this field next year and allow us to probe and characterize the first generation of galaxies in much greater detail. Specifically, I will present an overview of the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES), a joint program of the JWST/NIRCam and NIRSpec Guaranteed Time Observations (GTO) teams involving 950 hours of observation.