The Estes Valley Astronomical Society is offering a free public lecture on Saturday, April 27^th, 2024 at the Estes Park Memorial Observatory.  The goal of EVAS is to promote amateur astronomy and education in the Estes Valley.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is the largest and most complete space-based observatory ever built. It is currently at its observing spot, nearly one million miles from Earth.

Our speaker is Erin Wolf former Program Manager and Technical Lead for the JWST at BAE Systems, Inc. (formerly Ball Aerospace). Erin’s presentation recounts the JWST design and build lifecycle, with updates from newly released images. Less than two years into its mission, JWST has broken the record for the oldest galaxy ever observed by nearly 100 million years. It is seeing some of the first galaxies to form after the big bang 13.8 billion years ago. And some of those galaxies are bigger than our theories say they should be at such a young age of the universe! So what do we know now about the origins of our Universe that Webb has illuminated? And what can a new mission, SPHEREx, tell us about what drove early universe Inflation?

Erin is currently a program manager for the SPHEREx program at Ball Aerospace. SPHEREx is NASA’s middle-class explorer program (MIDEX) Infrared observatory that will survey the sky in optical and near-infrared light which serves as a powerful tool for answering cosmic questions. In her role, Wolf fosters the mentorship of junior engineers and provides growth opportunities for all career levels.

Before joining BAE Systems, Inc. in 2017, Wolf worked on Webb at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center for eight years. She also contributed to Landsat 9’s TIRS-2 instrument and to the fourth Hubble Servicing Mission. She has worked on many payloads in the past, with an emphasis on cryogenic systems and IR detectors

Wolf is a member of the Society for Women Engineers (SWE) and has been involved with the International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE). She has received various awards for her work on Webb, including the NASA Silver Achievement Medal, Group (2014) and NASA Exceptional Public Achievement Medal, Individual (2023), and was recognized as a Mentor of the Quarter at Ball. Wolf is a lifetime Girl Scout and Gold Award recipient.

Wolf received a B.S. in physics from the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, WA, and attended the Systems Engineering master’s program at Johns Hopkins University, MD.

The Estes Park Memorial Observatory is just north of the high school at 1600 Manford Ave. Park in the teacher’s parking lot between the high school and the observatory. The doors will open at 7:00 pm and the meeting will start at 7:30 pm. The presentation, including a question and answer period, lasts about an hour. After the presentation, weather permitting, we will look through our 16-inch dome telescope at various celestial objects.