NASA researcher to discuss first two years of discovery with James Webb Space Telescope

Klaus Pontoppidan, Ph.D., a researcher with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., will deliver a presentation on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) on Dec. 7 in Flowers Hall Room 34.

The event will run from 4-5 p.m. It is free and open to the public; preregistration is encouraged. 

The JWST is NASA’s newest flagship astronomical observatory. Pontoppidan’s lecture will cover the first two years of operation and provide behind the scenes information of how the first images came to be. 

Texas State has close ties to the JWST program. A team of researchers led by Andrea Banzatti, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Physics, recently used the JWST to make a breakthrough discovery revealing information on how planets are formed. By observing water vapor in protoplanetary disks, the researchers confirmed a physical process that provides a highly dynamic picture of planet formation—the drift of icy solids from beyond the orbit of Neptune into the rocky planet zone within a few astronomical units, the region of terrestrial planets in Earth’s solar system. 

Pontoppidan is known for his extensive work on the evolution of water and other volatiles—from ices in the interstellar medium to rocky planet-forming regions around young stars—to understand the origins of exoplanetary atmospheres. To this end, he has contributed to the development of infrared spectroscopic techniques and instrumentation. He is active in JWST observing programs, including co-leading the JDISC Survey of protoplanetary disk chemistry. He worked on the NIRSpec and MIRI instrument ground systems, developed the JWST Exposure Time Calculator and served as JWST project scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute for eight years through launch and commissioning. Pontoppidan has also made significant contributions to public outreach, including as the principal investigator of the first color images from JWST.