  On July 13, 2022, NASA released to the whole world the data obtained by the
James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Early Release Observations (ERO). These are
the first set of science-grade data from this long-awaited facility, marking
the beginning of a new era in astronomy. In the study of the early universe,
JWST will allow us to push far beyond z ~ 11, the redshift boundary previously
imposed by the 1.7 um red cut-off of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). In
contrast, JWST's NIRCam reaches 5 um. Among the JWST ERO targets there is a
nearby galaxy cluster SMACS 0723-73, which is a massive cluster and has been
long recognized as a potential "cosmic telescope" in amplifying background
galaxies. The ERO six-band NIRCam observations on this target have covered an
additional flanking field not boosted by gravitational lensing, which also sees
far beyond HST. Here we report the result from our search of candidate objects
at z > 11 using these ERO data. In total, there are 87 such objects identified
by using the standard "dropout" technique. These objects are all detected in
multiple bands and therefore cannot be spurious. For most of them, their
multi-band colors are inconsistent with known types of contaminants. If the
detected dropout signature is interpreted as the expected Lyman-break, it
implies that these objects are at z ~ 11--20. The large number of such
candidate objects at such high redshifts is not expected from the previously
favored predictions and demands further investigations. JWST spectroscopy on
such objects will be critical.
