About this Article

Chris Evans (christopher.evans[at]esa.int), Paule Sonnentrucker (ESA Office at STScI)

Published June 10, 2026

The latest in the successful series of ESA-sponsored conferences, “Science with the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes VIII: Enriching the Universe: From Primordial Nucleosynthesis to Exoplanet Atmospheres,” was held in April in Vienna, Austria, in collaboration with STScI and the University of Vienna. The conference brought together over 100 participants from 19 countries, with more joining online.

The overarching conference theme was the chemical evolution of the universe, which underpins a broad range of the ongoing frontier research with Hubble and Webb, including the production of heavy elements in the first stars, the chemical enrichment in galaxies over successive generations of star formation and stellar death, and the complex chemistry in the interstellar medium and stellar environments, which builds up the molecules in the atmospheres of exoplanets as well as planets in our solar system.

The program featured a broad overview of the latest science from the missions, with the topics grouped in two pillars: nucleosynthesis over cosmic time, and the chemical journey from dust and ice to atmospheres. The science sessions ranged from the development of chemical complexity of the solar system out to the chemical evolution of galaxies at the highest redshifts, with over 30 contributed talks. 

The program also featured more than 20 poster presentations, with physical posters on display all week and five-minute context talks for poster presenters to introduce their work followed by dedicated time for attendees to ask questions. See the full scientific program.

To help promote networking and foster collaborations, a key feature of this conference series has been to select venues that can comfortably host around 100 participants to ensure there are more opportunities for new connections. Attendees in Vienna spanned the full range of career stages, from master’s and PhD students to senior and emeritus faculty, along with high-level representation from ESA, STScI, NASA, AURA, JHU, and ESO.

To set the scene on day one, the first session featured talks about ESA’s science program by Markus Kissler-Patig of ESA and the latest on Hubble, Webb, and Roman from the mission heads at STScI, Julia Roman-Duval, Tom Brown, and Kristen McQuinn, respectively.

On the final day, we turned our attention to the 2030s and beyond, with talks on the future ESA Science Program from Gaitee Hussain of ESA, the future ESO program, including the latest on the construction of the Extremely Large Telescope from Jarle Brinchmann of ESO, the future prospects for Hubble from Jennifer Wiseman of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, and plans for the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) from Aki Roberge, also from Goddard.

Hubble’s Unique Capabilities and Enabling Future Science

A recurring theme throughout the talks and discussion was the critical contribution of Hubble’s ultraviolet and visible observations, and their complementarity with Webb and other facilities that observe across the electromagnetic spectrum. Hubble’s capabilities will not be surpassed until a mission such as HWO is in operation. Within this landscape, Hubble is already doing preparatory science for a mission like HWO, and Hubble’s next discoveries will set the scientific agenda for other facilities well into the 2030s.

In particular, the rich diagnostics that Hubble’s ultraviolet spectroscopy provides are vital in many fields to obtain physical information that is inaccessible otherwise. To mention just three examples that were highlighted during the week, Hubble is playing a vital role in ascertaining the presence and role of clouds and aerosols in exoplanet atmospheres, its unique wavelength coverage is essential to determine precise abundances of heavy elements in studies of stellar nucleosynthesis, and Hubble provides unique early-time ultraviolet spectroscopy of core-collapse supernovae to trace the previously circumstellar material around the progenitors.

Webb’s Transformative Discoveries

For Webb, after many of the first spectacular results and discoveries that come with its unprecedented capabilities, the community now has an excellent grasp of the observatory’s performance and how to extract the maximum scientific return from the data. During the week, we heard examples of how new programs are building comprehensive samples of objects across fields such as galaxy evolution, stellar populations, and protoplanetary disks by pushing the observatory’s capabilities and in many cases addressing questions that were only posed recently by the early results from the mission.

Combining the Power of Hubble and Webb

An excellent example of Hubble and Webb working in scientific synergy is the ongoing Rocky Worlds Director’s Discretionary Time (DDT) program. An overview of the Rocky Worlds program and its progress was given on day two by Néstor Espinoza of STScI.

Also of note were talks about the European HST and JWST science archives by Deborah Baines of ESA, and ESA’s DataLabs science platform by Marcos López-Caniego from Aurora for ESA. Building on the multi-decade partnership on the archives between ESA and STScI’s MAST and Canada’s CADC, a subset of Hubble and Webb High-Level Science Products (HLSP) are now available in the European archives, including those from Rocky Worlds and the Hubble Spectroscopic Legacy Archive.

If you have new results from your own Hubble or Webb programs that you think would be of wider public interest, please contact theESA/Hubble and Webb outreach team for European-led teams or the STScI news team.

Giving Thanks

We would like to extend our sincere thanks to the members of the Scientific Organizing Committee (SOC) and Local Organizing Committee (LOC), who contributed to a tremendously successful, stimulating, and enjoyable conference.

SOC: Chris Evans (Chair), Angela Adamo, Sudeshna Boro Saika, Annalisa De Cia, Ylva Götberg, Maximilian Günther, Arshia Jacob, Chiaki Kobayashi, Mercedes López-Morales, Pascal Oesch, Els Peeters, Colin Snodgrass.

LOC: Paule Sonnentrucker (co-chair), Manuel Güdel (co-chair), Melody Easton, Vera Flasch, Maria Gunnarsson, Sherita Hanna, Oliver Herbort, Jean-Baptiste Regnard, Simon Schleich, Gwenaëlle Van Looveren, Sofia Velasco, Elizabeth Wheatley.