Physical Society Colloquium

The first results of the James Webb Space Telescope

René Doyon

Département de physique
Université de Montréal

After more than two decades of development, the James Webb Space Telescope was finally launched on Christmas Day 2021 in a near-perfect trajectory to its final destination at the second Lagrange point, 1.5 million km from Earth. Its complex deployment was flawless, as was the six-month commissioning period that followed to characterize the performance of the telescope and its four science instruments. Webb is performing as expected and even better. The Early Release Observations, the first demonstration images and spectroscopic data, were spectacular and have been shown around the world last July. I will give a brief overview of the Webb mission by presenting the performance of the telescope as well as some recent results on distant galaxies and atmospheric characterization of exoplanets.