Astronomy Seminar

Dust is a key ingredient in the formation of stars and planets. However, the dominant channels of dust production throughout cosmic time are still unclear. With its unprecedented sensitivity and spatial resolution in the mid-IR, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is the ideal platform to address this issue by investigating the dust abundance, composition, and production rates of various dusty sources. In particular, colliding-wind Wolf-Rayet (WR) binaries are efficient dust producers in the local Universe and likely existed in the earliest galaxies. In this talk, I will discuss the results and on-going work initiated by our WR DustERS Team from Cycle 1 Early Release Science with JWST using the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) and the Aperture Masking Interferometry mode in the Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS).

To join on Zoom: https://caltech.zoom.us/j/88139532758