JWST

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which launched on December 25, 2021, is the long-anticipated successor to the Hubble Space Telescope. Optimized for near-infrared observations, with a dazzling array of instrumentation, JWST will make fundamental new discoveries about the very early Universe, the assembly of galaxies, the birth of stars and planets, and the origins of life. Through the involvement of the Canadian Space Agency, Canadian astronomers have access to 5% of time for PI-driven projects on this extraordinary facility. WCA member Brian McNamara, has been awarded time to use the telescope (see NASA's 286 selected proposals).  McNamara’s focus will be on an object about 6 billion light years away called Phoenix, a giant galaxy that appears to be forming from its surrounding gas. Alongside Professor Michael McDonald from Massachusetts Institute for Technology and a team of collaborators, McNamara’s research will focus on the supermassive black hole at the heart of Phoenix to study how it regulates the galaxy’s growth and formation. Currently, galaxy formation is not well understood, but astronomers think that the cooling of extremely hot (100 million degree) plasma, controlled by nearby supermassive black holes, is what creates some new galaxies over billions of years.