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Today our Guest Speaker is Peter Coates who is well known for his Sunbury U3A courses on Astronomy, Geology and recently new scientific discoveries.
Now it is back to Astronomy with the James Webb space telescope which was launched into space on Christmas Day 2021.
At a cost of around $US13 Billion it is one of the most expensive space programs undertaken.
With it’s 6.5metre mirror, it will see deeper and further back in time than its predecessors, and hopefully answer some of the questions troubling physicists today.

It has four primary aims:

1. To see all the way back to when the first galaxies formed, around 13.6billion years ago.
2. To observe how galaxies have formed over time and to investigate the super massive black holes in the centre of some of them.
3. To investigate the lifecycle of stars, especially their birth and formation of the proto-planetary discs that sometimes form around them.
4. To search for, and then study, exoplanets orbiting other stars.
   

This talk will discuss the aims and how the Webb is equipped to do this and briefly what the results have been to date.

This talk will be a glimpse into a much detailed series of presentations on the Webb Space Telescope to commence in Term 2….and not to be missed.