Christmas morning brought a treat to astronomers as the successful launch of the Webb Telescope opened a new era of discovery.  The mission went through a six-month period of deploying the sun shield, aligning the telescope segments, and checking the functionality of the science instruments. The data collected during commissioning gave hints at this telescope's power, and now with the first observing programs receiving data, we are just beginning to appreciate what this telescope and its cameras and spectrometers can do.
 
Marcia Rieke ~  Biography
 
Marcia Rieke is a Regents Professor of Astronomy at the University of Arizona.  Her research interests include infrared observations of the center of the Milky Way and of other galactic nuclei and observation of the infrared sky at as faint a level as possible to study distant galaxies.
These research interests have driven her to characterize and develop large-format, low-noise infrared detector arrays. She received her undergraduate and graduate degrees in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She came to the University of Arizona in 1976 as a postdoctoral fellow and has been there ever since.   She has served as the Deputy Principal Investigator on NICMOS, (the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer for the Hubble Space Telescope), the Outreach Coordinator for the Spitzer Space Telescope, and now is the Principal Investigator for the near-infrared camera (NIRCam) for the James Webb Space Telescope.  She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences and was recently named the Professor Elizabeth Roemer Endowed Chair in Astronomy.
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