Full Description
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), planned for operation in about five years, will have the capability to investigate - and answer - some of the most challenging questions in astronomy. Although motivated and designed to study the very early Universe, the performance of the observatory's instruments over a very wide wavelength range will allow the world's scientific community unequaled ability to study cosmic phenomena as diverse as small bodies in the Solar System and the formation of galaxies.
As part of preparation to use JWST, a conference was held in Tucson, Arizona in 2007 that brought together astronomers from around the world to discuss the mission, other major facilities that will operate in the coming decade, and major scientific goals for them. This book is a compilation of those presentations by some of the leading researchers from all branches of astronomy. This book also includes a "pre-history" of JWST, describing the lengthy process and some of the key individuals that initiated early work on the concepts that would evolve to become the premier space observatory of the next decade.
Contents
The James Webb Space Telescope.- Beyond the Hubble Space Telescope: Early Development of the Next Generation Space Telescope.- The Kuiper Belt and Other Debris Disks.- The Future of Ultracool Dwarf Science with JWST.- Transiting Exoplanets with JWST.- The Unsolved Problem of Star Formation: Dusty Dense Cores and the Origin of Stellar Masses.- Accretion Disks Before (?) the Main Planet Formation Phase.- Astrochemistry of Dense Protostellar and Protoplanetary Environments.- Extreme Star Formation.- Prospects for Studies of Stellar Evolution and Stellar Death in the JWST Era.- Origin and Evolution of the Interstellar Medium.- Astrophysics in the Next Decade: The Evolution of Galaxies.- The Co-Evolution of Galaxies and Black Holes: Current Status and Future Prospects.- The Intergalactic Medium at High Redshifts.- Observing the First Stars and Black Holes.- Baryons: What,When and Where?.- Observational Constraints of Reionization History in the JWST Era.- The Frontier of Reionization: Theory and Forthcoming Observations.
