On Wednesday, February 22 at 7 p.m., the Thetford Public Libraries Network presents René Doyon’s conference entitled “The first results of the James Webb space telescope”.
After more than two decades in development, the James Webb Space Telescope was finally launched on Christmas Day 2021 on 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 instruments, one of which was Canadian-made. Webb works as expected or even better. Its first demonstration spectroscopic images and data are spectacular and have been around the world this summer. The speaker will give a brief overview of the Webb mission with some results on distant galaxies and the atmospheric characterization of exoplanets.
A few words about the speaker
Originally from Thetford Mines, it was at the end of his studies, at the dawn of the 1990s, that René Doyon began an impressive and prestigious career as an astrophysicist. From a researcher in his early days, he is now a full professor in the physics department of the Université de Montréal.
Recognized as a leader in the field of research on extra-solar planets, his research has led to important discoveries that have earned him numerous awards. Among these, note that he received twice, in 2008 and 2023, the Scientist of the Year award, awarded by Radio-Canada.
Director of the Mont-Mégantic Observatory and the Institute for Research on Exoplanets, he is one of the four principal researchers involved in the construction of the James-Webb Space Telescope, a complex observatory of 10 billion dollars, developed by NASA with support from the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency. He also leads various avant-garde astronomical instrumentation projects (camera and spectrograph) for the Mont Mégantic Observatory and other observatories in Hawaii and Chile.
Users of the Thetford Public Library Network can obtain tickets by going to the loan counter of the Cégep library. Note that a limit of two tickets per member has been set.