Preparing for JWST


Image credit: Northrop Grumman

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will peer at the Universe in the infra-red, in its orbit, far away from the heat radiated by the Earth.  With a sunshield the size of a tennis court and a primary mirror of ~6m in diameter, we will see further than we have seen before, observing galaxies in the first few Myrs after the Big Bang.

As a member of the Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) Guaranteed Time Observation (GTO) team, I am currently helping to prepare our spectroscopic extragalactic survey.  With my main scientific focus being galaxy evolution from large statistical samples, I am working on crafting our selection to best allow measurements that require un-biased samples of galaxies spanning redshift and stellar mass, e.g. the mass-metallicity relation of galaxies, and its evolution over cosmic time.

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