Star Talks: James Webb Space Telescope Mission

Since 2002, Dr. Rogier Windhorst has been Interdisciplinary Scientist for James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), with which he plans to make detailed a study of the epoch of First Light, when the universe was much less than one billion years old. He hopes to observe the First Stars and, with his team, monitor the best survey field at the North Ecliptic Pole (NEP) to find the earliest supernovae, faint variable brown dwarf stars in our Galaxy, faint variable Active Galactic Nuclei, and to study the host galaxies of the first quasars seen less than one billion years after the Big Bang.

Dr. Rogier Windhorst is Regents' and Foundation Professor at Arizona State University and Interdisciplinary Scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Since 1987, he helped build up a world class group of astrophysicists and the ASU Cosmology Initiative, consisting of 16 faculty and numerous postdocs and students in the ASU School of Earth and Space Exploration.