JWST NIRCam and MIRI reveal the dust-producing AGB population of NGC 6822

September 2026 • 2026MNRAS.551g1336N

Authors • Nally, Conor • Jones, Olivia C. • Lenkić, Laura • Ferguson, Annette M. N. • Habel, Nolan • Hirschauer, Alec S. • Meixner, Margaret • Kavanagh, P. J. • Boyer, Martha L. • Nayak, Omnarayani • Sargent, B. • Scicluna, P.

Abstract • We present a photometric catalogue of the Local Group dwarf galaxy NGC 6822 based on deep James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) observations obtained with the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). Point-spread-function photometry and band-matching were performed with STARBUGII. The resulting catalogue contains 864 114 NIRCam point sources and 17 235 MIRI detections, with 10 079 detected in both instruments. Blackbody fitting yields effective temperatures and bolometric luminosities for 119 621 stars, providing a detailed view of the resolved stellar content. Candidate evolved stars were selected from NIRCam─MIRI colour─magnitude diagrams, with the sample refined by removing resolved contaminants and excluding young stellar objects through spectral energy distribution fitting. The final sample of 1226 evolved stars was analysed using the Grid of Red Supergiant and Asymptotic Giant Branch Models, from which dust-production rates were obtained and carbon-rich or oxygen-rich asymptotic giant branch (AGB) classifications assigned via a likelihood-weighted comparison across the full model set. Across the JWST fields, evolved stars return $5.6\times 10^{-7}\, M_\odot \, {\rm yr^{-1}}$ of dust to the interstellar medium, with oxygen-rich AGB stars contributing 60 per cent and carbon-rich AGB stars 35 per cent, despite the low metallicity of NGC 6822. The unexpectedly high oxygen-rich contribution indicates the presence of intermediate-mass AGB stars undergoing hot-bottom burning, in line with the recent star formation history of NGC 6822. Dust-producing AGB stars exhibit a centrally concentrated carbon-rich population and a more extended oxygen-rich population. We also identify JWST colour relations that provide robust photometric estimators of dust-production rates for evolved stars.

Links

• PREPRINT http://arxiv.org/abs/2607.11682