Rogier Windhorst, astronomer, Regents' and Foundation Professor, Co-Director of the ASU Cosmology Initiative, and James Webb Space Telescope Interdisciplinary Scientist will discuss next-generation telescopes that will expand the frontiers first discovered by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Of particular focus will be NASA's new 6.5 meter James Webb Space Telescope and the 25-meter Giant Magellan Telescope under construction in Chile. The James Webb Space Telescope, launching in 2019, is a large space-based observatory, optimized for infrared wavelengths, which will compliment and extend the discoveries of the Hubble Space Telescope. It will look back into the first 200-400 million years after the Big Bang when the first stars were formed.

The Giant Magellan is a member of the next class of giant ground-based telescopes that promises to revolutionize our view and understanding of the universe with a resolving power 10 times greater than the Hubble Space Telescope. Both new telescopes will complement each other and use gravitational lensing to detect the first galaxies, and possibly the first stars and black hole accretion disks.

Rogier Windhorst is a Regents’ Professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration. His research is in astronomy, cosmology, galaxy formation and evolution, the cosmic dark ages and the epoch of First Light, and astronomical instrumentation. Since the early 1990's, his group at ASU has contributed significantly to unraveling the formation and evolution of distant galaxies with the Hubble Space Telescope, and the role that supermassive black holes and Active Galactic Nuclei have played in the process of galaxy assembly. He is one of the world's six interdisciplinary scientists for NASA's 6.5 meter James Webb Space Telescope to be launched in 2019. His group at ASU plans to use JWST to map the epoch of First Light in detail.

RSVP at: First Light Lecture

This is not an HSGP-sponsored event but will be of interest to many of our members.