Webinar with Brian Welch (International Space Science Institute, Bern, Switzerland)
Thursday, 30th April 2026 (17h CEST)
Please click on this Link for the Zoom Session
Meeting ID: 852 6990 9362
Password: 459004
The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) together offer an unprecedentedly detailed view of galaxies across cosmic time, from the first few hundred million years after the Big Bang through today. However, even these uniquely powerful telescopes struggle to resolve the small-scale building blocks of galaxies in the distant universe. Gravitational lensing provides an extra boost to the resolving power of HST and JWST, using massive galaxy clusters in the foreground as cosmic telescopes to magnify distant galaxies. In this talk, the speaker will discuss how the combination of HST, JWST, and gravitational lensing provides a window into the heart of distant galaxies, revealing compact star clusters and even individual massive stars that are key engines of evolution within galaxies. These measurements enable us to better understand how distant galaxies form stars, stop forming stars, and build up elements such as nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon that form the fundamental building blocks of life on Earth.
