Garth Illingworth

The Future and the Distant Past: The James Webb Space Telescope

2018 Salon 3: Space!
September 2019

Talk length:

14:33

The Future and the Distant Past: The James Webb Space Telescope | Garth Illingworth | TEDxPerthSalon

Telescopes that see distant objects reveal not only what is very far away, but also what is very old. The Hubble Space Telescope has seen 97% to the beginning of the Universe.

Garth shows us the most distant object ever observed, an object found by his team: the remarkable GN-z11 galaxy when the universe was barely 500 million years old. The James Webb Space Telescope is set to see back even further. Garth is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He was a Miller Fellow at UC Berkeley, the Deputy-Director of the Space Telescope Science Institute and, in 2010, was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science degree at the University of Western Australia. He is the recipient of the 2016 American Astronomical Society Lancelot M. Berkeley New York Community Trust Prize for his work on the most-distant galaxies viewed with Hubble Space Telescope. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community.

Garth Illingworth
Distinguished Professor Emeritus

Garth is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He was a Miller Fellow at UC Berkeley, the Deputy-Director of the Space Telescope Science Institute, and in 2010 was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science degree at the University of Western Australia. He is the recipient of the 2016 American Astronomical Society Lancelot M. Berkeley New York Community Trust Prize for his work on the most-distant galaxies viewed with Hubble, and was a plenary speaker for this award at the 2017 meeting of the American Astronomical Society. He was the 2018 Bahcall Lecturer, giving a series of invited talks at the Space Telescope Science Institute, the Goddard Space Flight Center and the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.