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November 2023 Lecture – Prof. Jorick Vink (AOP) – ‘First Light with the James Webb Space Telescope’

For our November lecture we are really pleased to have back Professor Jorick Vink from the Armagh Observatory along to give us a talk.  Jorick was last with us in 2017 and it’s great to be able to have him back. The title of his talk is ‘First Light with the James Webb Space Telescope’, I’m sure you will agree with me, I’m really interested to hear how our local astronomers are getting on with this long awaited space telescope!

This talk will take place in our usual venue at Ballyclare High School Lecture theatre, on Monday 6th November, starting at 8pm sharp. Directions can be found here!

About the talk:

JWST was launched on Christmas Day 2021. It is expected to revolutionise our view of the Early Universe. While relatively nearby “Local” galaxies are observable in the optical part of the Electromagnetic spectrum with telescopes such as the Hubble Space Telescope, those at very large distances emitted their light already billions of years ago, which caused this starlight be a shifted into the redder wavelength parts of JWST. 
I will discuss JWST observations of individual massive stars Near & Far, as well as the “integrated” light of stellar Populations and early Galaxies.
 
About Professor Vink:
 
Prof Jorick Vink finished his thesis on “radiation-driven winds of massive stars” at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, before moving to Imperial College London in the UK in 2001. 
He was awarded an RCUK Academic Fellowship at Keele University in 2005 before moving to Armagh Observatory in 2007 where he became a Research Astronomer. 
He was Acting director of Armagh planetarium in 2015-2016, and received a visiting Professorship from the University of Leeds in 2017. 
His main research interests are in stellar evolution, atmospheres, and winds from massive stars up to explosion. 
He is currently Principal Investigator (PI) of the ESO-VLT Large Programme: “X-Shooting ULLYSES: the physics of massive stars at low Metallicity”. 

We’re really looking forward to this talk and please make sure you clear your schedules, as you don’t want to miss this one!

As usual tea and refreshments will be available after the meeting, so this is a great chance to catch up and have a chitchat with friends before you head home!

Hope to see you all there!