On February 26, 2026, Liberty Science Center was thrilled to host Dr. Joshua Lovell, CfA Fellow Postdoctoral associate at the Center for Astrophysics Harvard-Smithsonian for our latest space talk, The Journey from Stardust to Solar Systems.

Inside our Milky Way galaxy there are billions of planetary systems, stars outside our own Solar System that have planets of their very own. However old these planetary systems are today, they had to have a beginning to their life. It is the work of astronomers like Dr. Lovell to study where these stars and the planets that orbit them come from.

All stars begin their lives in the same way, as massive clouds of gas and dust in space. Thanks to small differences in density in these clouds, over the course of millions of years gravity begins to shrink these clouds down. As this shrinking occurs they heat up until they become hot enough to become a star! Planets then form from any material left over that doesn’t go into making stars. Until recently, though, exactly how this leftover material becomes planets has been a mystery! Thanks to recent telescopes and observatories like the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers like Dr. Lovell are able to study these systems in their earliest years and see just how these planets form.

Using the largest planetarium in the country, Dr. Lovell was able to take us on a journey around the galaxy. From looking at the planets in our own solar system, into the heart of the Orion Nebula where new stars are being born today, and all the way out to newly forming planetary systems like Fomalhaut to see how dusty disks of debris are forming into planets today!

This image of the dusty debris disk surrounding the young star Fomalhaut is from Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). It reveals three nested belts of debris, extending to 14 billion miles (23 billion kilometers) from the star. Image: NASA, ESA, CSA; Image Processing: András Gáspár (University of Arizona), Alyssa Pagan (STScI); Science: András Gáspár (University of Arizona)

Join us next month on March 12th as we welcome Dr. Marcin Sawicki, Professor of Astronomy and Physics at Saint Mary's University and author of Webb's Cosmos: Images and Discoveries from the James Webb Space Telescope, as he hosts a book signing and helps us explore humanity’s greatest telescope!