Onset of dust-obscured star formation

Determine when dust began to obscure the view of early galaxy build-up.

Background

The obscured fraction of cosmic star formation is well constrained only to approximately redshift 6, while estimates at higher redshift range from a few percent to three quarters of total star formation. This uncertainty is driven by the difficulty of detecting faint dusty galaxies and by systematic uncertainties in estimating obscured star-formation rates, especially because the dust temperatures of early galaxies are poorly constrained. Establishing the onset of significant dust obscuration is therefore necessary for determining how much early galaxy growth is missed by rest-UV and optical surveys.