A new image from the James Webb Space Telescope will be shown publicly for the first time in LSC’s planetarium
Big news! A new image from the James Webb Space Telescope will be shown publicly for the first time this Thursday, Sept. 1 in LSC’s Jennifer Chalsty Planetarium during our “Space Talk” presentation!
LSC’s FREE “Space Talk” presentations occur every first Thursday of the month at our LSC After Dark 21+ events. Each one is hosted by a guest astronomer, exploring the Biggest Unanswered Questions of the universe in the Biggest Planetarium in America.
On Sept. 1, our “Space Talk” will be hosted by Dr. Kristen McQuinn, a professor of astronomy at Rutgers University, in a presentation called “What Secrets Will the James Webb Space Telescope Reveal?”
That night, Dr. McQuinn will present – for the first time – an extremely detailed image of a tiny galaxy called Wolf–Lundmark–Melotte (WLM). Images like this one help us explore how small galaxies have evolved over the vast history of cosmic time, and how some of the oldest stars in the universe were born and how they have changed over time.
The Jennifer Chalsty Planetarium is uniquely equipped to display high resolution images like this one from the James Webb Space Telescope. While a standard computer monitor can display around 2 million pixels, the planetarium can display over 50 million! This allows images like this to be shown in detail you could never see at home, at the same time making it feel like you are truly inside of the image via the planetarium dome.
Throughout her career, Dr. McQuinn has pioneered research into these often-forgotten dwarf galaxies using data from other telescopes, like the Hubble Space Telescope. She is one of the first astronomers in the world to get early access to the ground-breaking data from the James Webb Space Telescope.
Earlier this month, Dr. McQuinn stopped by the planetarium, along with astrophysics students from Rutgers, to see the image in the planetarium.
“The incredible resolution and detail of the JWST images made it feel like we were inside the WLM galaxy looking up at the night sky (but with bionic vision)!” said Dr. McQuinn. “It was truly a spectacular experience. “
Join us Sept. 1 at 7:00 pm at LSC After Dark to be one of the first to see this stunning image in LSC’s Jennifer Chalsty Planetarium, the biggest planetarium in America, and learn more about what’s to come from the James Webb Space Telescope! Click here to learn more and get tickets now.
