“Surprises at the Dawn of Time from James Webb: A First Look at the First Stars, Galaxies, and Black Holes”
Presented by Joel Leja
Assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics and Institute for Computational and Data Sciences Faculty Fellow at Penn State

February 3, 2024
100 Huck Life Sciences Building (Berg Auditorium)
11:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

The James Webb Space Telescope is the culmination of thirty years of planning, twenty years of construction, and eleven billion dollars of funding. It is the most expensive and complex astronomical observatory ever built and it was designed specifically to perform the first systematic exploration of stars, galaxies, and black holes in the early universe. Luckily for us, this first systematic exploration is happening right now --- in our lives. Leja will provide an overview of this flagship telescope and discuss some of the stunning early, and sometimes tentative, discoveries that have been made in Webb's first deep fields from the first light of galaxies and black holes, which has travelled many billions of years through empty space before being captured by Webb.

More info: https://science.psu.edu/frontiers/joel-leja-michael-eracleous