CWRU Professor Chris Mihos, and his graduate student, Ray Garner, will be our speakers. Dr. Bill Janesh, also of the CWRU Department of Astronomy, will be our moderator. Our speakers will present the wonder, purpose, and future of the James Webb Space Telescope as it sends back information about the origin and development of universes beyond our known or imagined ones. Why, we may ask, is this important? Finding the earliest galaxies requires very low foreground light levels, ultra-sharp images over large areas, and studies at many infrared wavelengths, a combination of observing conditions only available from space.

The JWST, launched on December 21, 2021, provides these unique conditions and will help scientists to, among many things: • Observe the era of our universe’s history when galaxies began to form.

• Learn more about the formation and role of supermassive black holes.

• Learn more about the history of the acceleration of the universe that we attribute to dark energy.

• And, as with the Hubble Space Telescope, discover new, never before imagined space events.

J. Christopher Mihos is the Worcester R. and Cornelia B. Warner Professor of Astronomy at CWRU. He received his BS in Astronomy at the California Institute of Technology and PhD from the University of Michigan. Before joining CWRU in 1998, he was a Hubble Fellow at Johns Hopkins University. His research combines observational data from ground and space-based telescopes with state-of-the-art computer modeling to study the evolution of galaxies and galaxy clusters. He actively engages undergraduate and graduate students in this research. Said one student of Dr. Mihos: “Take his class – you will learn so much about astronomy, particularly the ongoing process of scientific discovery.” The second speaker, Ray Garner is one of those graduate students. Ray’s main research interest is in the formation of stars in the Pinwheel Galaxy, 21 million light years away in the constellation Ursa Major. Our Moderator is Dr. Bill Janesh, also of the CWRY Dept. of Astronomy, whose research interests combine the observation of faint dwarf galaxies and their interaction with large galaxies in the Local Group, and using computational methods to make astronomical data analysis more accessible and efficient .

Join us and become part of this “ongoing process of scientific discovery.” If you know very little or very much about NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, Lecture Day 2022 is certain to enlighten and delight you! NASA has been posting photos from the JWST online at www.nasa.gov 

Recommended Reading: Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, by Neil deGrasse Tyson.