ASLMS 2023 Keynote Speaker
Marcia Rieke, PhD
Regents Professor of Astronomy at the University of Arizona, Professor Elizabeth Roemer Endowed Chair in Astronomy
Dr. Marcia Rieke served as the Deputy Principal Investigator on NICMOS, (the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer for the Hubble Space Telescope), the Outreach Coordinator for the Spitzer Space Telescope, and now is the Principal Investigator for the near-infrared camera (NIRCam) for the James Webb Space Telescope.
Plenary | Friday, April 14, 2023 | 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM MT
Presentation Title: The Webb Telescope: Twenty Years in the Making but Worth the Wait!
Presentation Summary: The James Webb Space Telescope marks a new era in space astronomy. The telescope itself is the most complicated space astronomy mission ever launched with an instrument suite designed to take maximum advantage of the telescope’s capabilities. Because of the nature of Webb, the commissioning process was highly structured with a carefully designed timeline. Dr. Rieke will discuss some of the challenges inherent in aligning the telescope optics and checking the functionality of all the systems. How the team met the challenges to achieve performance only limited by the laws of physics will be described. She will also share some of the exciting scientific results and what they mean for our understanding of how the universe began and is changing over time.