Discovering Galaxies in the Early Universe with the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope

This project is measuring the star formation rate in very distant galaxies (at redshifts well beyond one), using Hubble Space Telescope images and follow-up spectroscopy from large ground-based telescopes in Chile and Hawaii, and ultimately the James Webb Space Telescope. The science goal is to map the average rate at which the Universe forms stars as a function of time, and to assess whether the ultra-violet photons from the most massive stars could have produced the reionization of the Universe, which we know occurred at high redshift. These galaxies will be important targets for future study with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the successor to Hubble to be launched in 2018. Prof Bunker is on the European Space Agency Instrument Science Team for NIRSpec, the near-infrared spectrograph on JWST, and we will have guaranteed time observations from the start of the mission. This project falls with in the "Extra-Galactic Astronomy & Cosmology" theme of the "Astronomy - observation" research area.