Bullitt Lecture in Astronomy 2014 - Beyond Hubble: From Exoplanets to First Stars with the James Webb Space Telescope

The Physics & Astronomy Department’s Bullitt Lecture is a free lecture aimed at the general public. Since 2001, the Physics & Astronomy Department’s Bullitt Lecture has presented a distinguished astrophysicist to a Louisville audience in the Gheens Science Hall and Rauch Planetarium. Gale Christianson, Hubble's biographer at Indiana State, Fred Espenak, an eclipse expert at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, stellar astrophysicists James Kaler of U. Illinois, C. R. O'Dell of Vanderbilt and Caty Pilachowski of Indiana U, cosmologists Fang Li Zhi of Arizona, J. Richard Gott of Princeton, Alan Dressler of the Carnegie Observatories and lunar experts Ferenc Pavlics of GM and the Apollo project and Phillip Abel of NASA have been Bullitt Lecturers. College and high school students, teachers, and many others from the community interested in the impact and excitement that astrophysics has generated have attended Bullitt Lectures in large numbers. The public and members of the University community are warmly invited!

The Lecture is endowed through a grant from the family of William Marshall Bullitt, the Solicitor General of the United States under President William Howard Taft. Here is a brief biography and description of his connection to the University of Louisville.

Speaker: Rogier A. Windhorst, Arizona State University

Abstract: In the last 20 years, the Hubble Space Telescope has revolutionized our knowledge of the Universe, providing us with an unprecedented view of classes of objects in the sky, from local stars to the most distant galaxues. Despite this, many fundamental questions remain unaddressed. The time is ripe for its successor: the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Webb is the most ambitious and complex telescope ever designed and built and is scheduled for launch in 2018.