Rogier Windhorst (ASU) : How will the Webb Space Telescope measure First Light Reionization, & Galaxy Assembly in the post WFC3 era?

The 6.5 meter James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is designed to measure the epochs of First Light, Reionization, and Galaxy Assembly, building on critical lessons learned from the Hubble Space Telescope. This includes new results from its Wide Field Camera 3 installed by the Space Shuttle Astronauts in May 2009. Significant technical progress has been made on the design and fabrication of JWST: more than 75% of its launch mass has been built, passed final design, or is being built as of Spring 2012. All JWST's 18 flight mirrors have now been gold-coated, and its optical performance is predicted to meet or exceed specifications. Its four scientific instruments will be delivered to NASA in 2012 or early 2013. I will briefly summarize the path from today till launch, now planned for Fall 2018. JWST has the potential to revolutionize astronomy after its launch later this decade --- building on Hubble's heritage --- by measuring the epochs of First Light and Galaxy Assembly in great detail. JWST will measure the first population of massive stars when the expanding universe was 10-20 smaller than it is today, and only 200-500 million years old. I will show examples of what the first quasars may look like to JWST, addressing if super-massive black-holes grew in lockstep with galaxies. I will also show what deep JWST images may look like, sampling young galaxies in the very early universe, including examples of a gravitationally distorted universe that acts like a cosmic house of mirrors. Time permitting, I will also illustrate how JWST can measure star-formation, including new young solar systems, and how it may find water and carbon-dioxide in the atmospheres of Earth-like exoplanets transiting around nearby stars.