On Christmas day last year, NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency launched within the nose cone of an Ariane 5 rocket one of the most sophisticated instruments ever made in the service of human knowledge. This is the James Webb Space Telescope, the largest telescope ever placed in space with the noble goal of peering at the beginning of time. Ron Buta will describe a little about the telescope, how it compares with the Hubble Space Telescope, and what NASA and coworkers, as well as astronomers and astrophysicists worldwide, hope to accomplish with the 10 billion dollar space observatory.

Dr. Buta taught astronomy for nearly 30 years at the University of Alabama before retiring in 2018. He specializes in the study of galaxies, and is author of the recently published book, “Cosmic Pinwheels: Spiral Galaxies and the Universe.”

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