Stellar Properties of z 8 Galaxies in the Reionization Lensing Cluster Survey

Measurements of stellar properties of galaxies when the universe was less than one billion years old yield some of the only observational constraints on the onset of star formation. We present here the inclusion of Spitzer/IRAC imaging in the fitting of the spectral energy distribution of the seven highest-redshift galaxy candidates selected from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) imaging of the Reionization Lensing Cluster Survey. We find that for six out of eight HST-selected z ∼ 8 sources, the z ∼ 8 solutions are still strongly preferred over z ∼ 1-2 solutions after the inclusion of Spitzer fluxes, and two prefer a z ∼ 7 solution, which we defer to a later analysis. We find a wide range of intrinsic stellar masses (5 × 106-4 × 109 M ), star formation rates (0.2-14 M yr−1), and ages (30-600 Myr) among our sample. Of particular interest is A1763-1434, which shows evidence of an evolved stellar population (∼500 Myr) at z ∼ 8, implying that its first generation of star formation occurred