RAQ Speaker Series June 25 - Dr. David Hanes

Speaker: Dr. David Hanes

Department:  Queen's Astronomy Research Group, Department of Physcs and Astronomy

Date and Time: June 25, 1:00 – 2:00 pm

Title: Our New Eye on the Astronomical Universe

Dr. Hanes will describe the astonishingly powerful new James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), now that it has completed its second year of service from its vantage point beyond the Moon. He will display the glorious images it has produced, and explain how they have provided new insights into the birth of new stars, the properties of planets in other star systems – and the nature of the universe itself in its earliest stages, shortly after the ‘Big Bang.’

 After completing his PhD in the Department of Astronomy at the University of Toronto in 1975, he took up a five-year Postdoctoral Research position at Cambridge University. Following four years as a research Astronomer at the Anglo-Australian Observatory at the Australian National University, Canberra, he returned to Canada to take up a professorial position at Queen's, which has been his academic home ever since. In his astronomical research, he is a big-telescope user, studying issues such as the formation, structure, and interactions of galaxies. A delight of his career has been to carry out research programs at the great observatories of the world, with the accompanying enormous amount of international travel. At Queen's, he has particularly enjoyed teaching astronomy (and other physics courses!) to four decades of students. He says, “It's been a wonderful career.”  We look forward to having a glimpse into the exciting new developments in the universe.