The James Webb Space Telescope, which launched on Christmas Day 2021, is the long-awaited successor to both the Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes. Webb is an international collaboration, featuring strong involvement from the UK. Ultimately thousands of scientists from around the world will use data from Webb to answer a range of scientific questions. Webb will enable an enormous range of science from allowing us to identify the first stars and galaxies to form in the Universe to probing the atmospheres of alien planets.

About the speaker: Dr. Stephen M. Wilkins

Stephen Wilkins Born and raised in Yorkshire, Stephen (Steve) completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Durham before gaining his doctorate from the University of Cambridge. He then moved to Oxford where he worked as a research fellow. In 2013 Stephen was appointed a lecturer in astronomy at the University of Sussex and is now a Reader and Head of Astronomy. His current research interests focus on understanding the formation of the first stars and galaxies to form in the Universe. To do this he combines state-of-the-art super-computer simulations with observations from Hubble, Webb, and other observatories