NASA scientist to deliver astronomy lecture on new generation of space telescopes

Focusing on the new generation of space telescopes, the annual astronomy guest lecture at SUNY Fredonia will feature the top ten astronomical discoveries of the past decade.

The public lecture intended for general audiences will take place Thursday, Nov. 12, at 7 p.m. in McEwen Hall Room 202.

This year's guest speaker is Dr. Jonathan Gardner, Chief of the Observational Cosmology Laboratory at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

The annual Harlow Shapley Public Lecture on Astronomy has been a tradition of SUNY Fredonia's physics and geosciences departments for several decades. Funding also comes from the Phyllis W. and Lawrence A. Patrie Endowment for the Sciences (Fredonia College Foundation).

The lecture is aimed at sharing new understandings in astronomy with the general public. All are invited at no charge.

Dr. Gardner's lecture, entitled "A Scientific Revolution: The Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes," will cover the top 10 astronomical discoveries of the last 10 years, the upgrade of the Hubble Telescope, and the promise of its successor--the James Webb Space Telescope.

The guest speaker leads a group that studies the Universe as a whole, from its dramatic beginnings in the Big Bang, to the mysterious dark energy that will determine its future. The James Webb Space Telescope is the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope which will look backwards in time to find the first galaxies that formed after the Big Bang, to trace their evolution into galaxies like our own Milky Way, and to connect the formation of stars and planets with our own Solar System.