Watch the 'Nova' Episode Featuring Caltech and JPL Astronomers Working on JWST

“New Eye on the Universe,” which aired in February on PBS, outlines the secrets of the cosmos that JWST could reveal. Watch it here.

By Andrew Moseman

Last summer, the first new images from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) were released to the public, revealing the universe in unprecedented detail. Now, JWST is getting the Nova treatment.

PBS’s science series has aired a new hourlong episode about the big questions in astronomy, such as whether there is life out there in the cosmos, which JWST might help to answer. Among the scientists who appear are Lee Armus of Caltech’s IPAC; planetary researcher Tiffany Kataria of JPL, which Caltech manages for NASA; and JPL’s Michael Ressler, the project scientist for JWST’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), a camera and spectrograph combination that images in the mid-infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum, an ideal range to study faraway galaxies and new stars.

Armus says he is particularly excited for JWST’s potential to bring black holes into view. “It gives us a very close-up view of what’s happening inside the galaxies, how the gas is getting into the supermassive black hole, what the supermassive black hole is doing to the surrounding area,” he says in the episode.

Kataria notes JWST’s potential to add to the catalog of known exoplanets, which are planets that orbit another star. “It really does blow the mind when you think about Carl Sagan saying there were billions of galaxies. And so, that begs the question, are there trillions of exoplanets in the universe? I think there are,” she says on NOVA.

Watch the whole episode above.