New Worlds: Analyzing the Atmospheres of Exoplanets with the James Webb Space Telescope

On Wednesday, Apr. 9, 2025 at 7 pm (PST), Prof. Jonathan Fortney (U. of California, Santa Cruz) will give a free, illustrated, non-technical lecture entitled:   

"New Worlds:  Analyzing the Atmospheres of Exoplanets with the James Webb Space Telescope" 

in the Smithwick Theater at Foothill College, in Los Altos (see directions below)  

The talk is part of the Silicon Valley Astronomy Lecture Series, now in its 25th year.  

Over 6000 planets have now been found around other stars, but we only have information about what their atmospheres are like for a few dozen.  NASA's powerful James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which features a 20-foot mirror in space, is currently being used to understand atmospheres.  We can look for atmospheres around rocky planets the size of the Earth, and we can measure the abundances of molecules like water, methane, ammonia, and carbon dioxide, in larger planets, of sizes similar to Neptune and Jupiter.  In this talk Professor Fortney will describe the latest exoplanet results from JWST as we seek to understand these new worlds.

Jonathan Fortney is the Department Chair of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz.  He is a planetary astrophysicist who works to understand what planets and their atmospheres are made of, both for exoplanets around other stars and for solar system planets.  He has been a member of the science teams for NASA space missions like the Cassini Mission to Saturn and the Kepler Mission, which found over 3000 exoplanets.

Foothill College is just off the El Monte Road exit from Freeway 280 in Los Altos.    

For directions and parking information, see: https://foothill.edu/parking/  
For a campus map, to find the Smithwick Theater (Bldg. 1000), see: 

https://foothill.edu/map/   

Note: Parking lot 1 is closest, with access to the theater by stairs.  Parking lot 5 provides access from the same elevation as the theater.

The lecture is co-sponsored by:  

• The Foothill College Science, Tech, Engineering & Math Division  
• The SETI Institute and
• The Astronomical Society of the Pacific 

Past lectures in the series can also be found on YouTube at: http://youtube.com/svastronomylectures   

and as audio podcasts at: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1805595