Erratum: Galaxy source counts at 7.7 μm, 10 μm and 15 μm with the james webb space telescope (Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (2022) 517:1 (853–857) DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stac2716)

Official URL: https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stad918

This is a correction to the paper’Galaxy source counts at 7.7 μm, 10 μm and 15 μm with the James Webb Space Telescope’, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 517, Issue 1, November 2022, Pages 853–857, https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stac 2716. In the published version of the manuscript, a conversion error was introduced in the formula for the conversion between the observed number counts (dN/dS) and the differential source counts normalised to the Euclidean space (dN/dS × S2.5). The error originated in the calculation of the S2.5 term. By considering the width of each flux bin (S), we derived the term by the following formula (Equation presented) i.e. the final flux S was defined by the average of the flux values on both sides of the bin. The error was induced by two missing parentheses (Equation presented) where the exponent was incorrectly calculated first. This results in an overestimation of the conversion from dN/dS to dN/dS × S2.5 by a factor of 0.5/0.52.5 ∼ 3. Also, the conversion from dN/dS × S2.5 to dN/dS is underestimated by a factor of about 3. The error affects part of the data points in Fig. 6, 7 and 8 of the paper and could therefore lead to misleading results when using the data. The correct version of Fig. 6, 7 and 8 of the paper are presented in Fig. 1, 2 and 3, respectively. The observed number counts (the top panel of Fig. 2 and 3) of Elbaz et al. (1999); Gruppioni et al. (2002); Pearson et al. (2010); Takagi et al. (2012) shift upwards, while the differential source counts (the bottom panel of Fig. 1, 2 and 3) of JWST-002, JWST-006 (data points from the paper), Cowley et al. (2018) and Fazio et al. (2004) shift downwards. The effects of the error on our conclusions are summarised below: (i) The agreement between JWST data points (our work) and previous observation data (i.e. Elbaz et al. 1999; Gruppioni et al. 2002; Fazio et al. 2004; Pearson et al. 2010; Takagi et al. 2012) becomes slightly better after the correction. In addition, the correction contributes a small improvement in the agreement, especially for Takagi et al. (2012), as the deviation between the faint end of Takagi et al. (2012) and JWST data points is now reduced. (Equation presented) (ii) The agreement between JWST data points and model prediction from Cowley et al. (2018) remains the same. Nevertheless, the correction creates a discrepancy between our result and the source count model of Gruppioni et al. (2011) in 10 and 15 μm, which might suggest the model is overestimated at the faint end. Note that most parts of the 15 μm source model of Gruppioni et al. (2011) in JWST flux coverage (≲ 10−1 mJy) are obtained by the linear extrapolation, a solid conclusion may be hard to draw due to the uncertainty in the extrapolation.