RIESTER client UofA shows us the future by taking us back 13 billion years.

Like the rest of the world, we at RIESTER stared in wonder at the images of the Universe delivered by the James Webb Space Telescope this week. As we took it all in, we also felt a deep sense of pride, because our client, the University of Arizona, helped make it all possible.

The infrared technology used by the telescope was developed by Marcia Rieke, a Regents Professor of Astronomy at the UofA, and her husband George Rieke, a Regents Professor of Astronomy and Planetary Sciences. Pioneers in infrared astronomy, they lead the development of the Near Infrared Camera Instrument, also known as NIRCam. The UofA team worked in collaboration with Lockheed Martin.

The James Webb Space Telescope has already shown us thousands of galaxies and millions of stars we have never before seen. Astronomers will use it to study the history of the Universe and show us how our solar system evolved.

The UofA is the only university to have participated in four NASA infrared astronomy projects. This includes the Hubble, Spitzer, and the Infrared Astronomical Satellite. To learn more about this amazing achievement, we encourage you to visit https://jwst.arizona.edu/. It’s time to bear down and look up.