Book your FREE RAS December public lecture ticket
2021 is an exciting year for astronomy, with the launch of the highly anticipated James Webb Space Telescope (Webb) from French Guiana scheduled later this month! Webb will observe the universe in the infrared and will have a telescope mirror 6.5 m in diameter. This is so large that it will need to be folded up to fit inside the rocket for launch! Webb, with its complement of infrared instrumentation offering an unparalleled combination of sensitivity and diffraction limited performance, will open a new window on the universe. Webb is set to transform our understanding of the first bright objects in the universe, how stars and planets form, and will search for the chemical signatures of life on distant planets. In this talk I will give both an overview of the revolutionary engineering and science that has and will be achieved by Webb, including a discussion on the engineering challenges involved in building the largest telescope in space and the science which I will be doing with Webb once it launches
Dr Olivia Jones is a STFC Webb Fellow, based at the UK Astronomy Centre at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh. She received her PhD from the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics in 2013, and then worked at the Space Telescope Science Institute (the home to Hubble and Webb mission operations) prior to moving to Scotland. She is an expert in infrared astronomy and researches the beginnings and ends of stellar evolution in nearby galaxies. She is currently a member of the Webb instrument team and will be supporting its launch, commissioning and first observations later this year.
Book your FREE RAS December public lecture ticket