Stephen Wilkins: A tale of two telescopes - JWST and Euclid

04 July 2023 19:10 - 19:30 The Royal Society Free
Pillars of Creation (NIRCam and MIRI composite image)

This event is part of the Royal Society's Summer Science Exhibition 2023.

The culmination of decades of effort by scientists and engineers across the world, the JWST launched on Christmas Day 2021 and commenced scientific observations a little less than a year ago. In this time JWST’s exquisite sensitivity, resolution, and wavelength coverage has enabled astronomers to explore our Universe as never before. We’ve now peered through clouds of gas and dust to observe stars and planets forming, analysed the atmospheres of alien planets, and discovered galaxies present when the Universe was only a tiny fraction of its age.

This year JWST will be joined by ESA’s Euclid satellite. While smaller, and thus less sensitive, Euclid has a much larger field-of-view ultimately allowing it to survey around 1/3 of the entire sky with the same quality imaging as the Hubble Space Telescope. Euclid’s capabilities will enable it to map out structures across the Universe allowing us to better understand the mysterious dark matter and dark energy.

In this talk, Dr Stephen Wilkins (University of Sussex) will look back over JWST’s first exciting year of discovery and look forward to what it, and Euclid, may have in store for the future.

Attending the event

This talk will be held in the Kohn Centre on Tuesday 4th July, 7pm — 7.30pm.

  • Free to attend
  • In person only
  • No registration required
  • Suitable for 18+
  • Travel and accessibility information - contact us directly to arrange any specific accessibility requirements
  • Food and drink will be available for purchase at our onsite café

For all enquiries, please email us.