John Mather Visits Webb Science and Operations Center

Dr. John Mather (left) with Prof. David Gross (U.C. Santa Barbara, center), and the STScI Director, Dr. Matt Mountain (right). (courtesy Coyle Commercial Photographics, John J. Coyle, Jr.)

As the Webb project reaches its peak development years, the Webb Science and Operations Center (S&OC) at STScI is ramping up its development of the ground system for commissioning and science operations. John Mather, the NASA Senior Project Scientist for JWST, visited the Institute on December 5 2007 to meet the center staff. He was treated to an overview of the ground system and several prototype demonstrations including selection of NIRSpec apertures for multi-object spectroscopy and on-board scripts actually running the observation.

After John’s colloquium presentation, "From the Big Bang to the Nobel Prize and on to James Webb Space Telescope", he enjoyed dinner with the Director and senior staff from the STScI and the JHU physics and astronomy department and their 2007 Brickwedde speaker, David Gross (U.C. Santa Barbara).