THE QUEST FOR COSMIC DAWN: First results from the James Webb telescope

Astronomers are like time travellers, scanning the night sky for the outermost galaxies that first came into being when our universe was a mere fraction of its present age.
The first billion years after the Big Bang represent the final frontier in assembling a complete picture of cosmic history. During this period early galaxies formed and the universe first became bathed in light.

How and when did all this occur? Recent progress with the James Webb Space Telescope suggests we may soon witness this dramatic period when the universe emerged from darkness. The motivation is fundamental: the origin of starlight began the chemical evolution which ultimately led to our own existence in this remarkable universe.

Richard Ellis is Professor of Astrophysics at University College London. A Welshman by birth he has held professorial positions at Durham, Cambridge and Oxford universities and spent 16 years at the California Institute of Technology where he was Director of the Palomar Observatory.
Richard is a Fellow of the Royal Society and the Australian Academy of Sciences, and was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society and the Royal Medal of the Royal Society for his research achievements in cosmology and galaxy evolution.
One of the most highly-cited astronomers, he has recently published a semi-autobiographical account of the progress over his career in studying distant galaxies in 'When Galaxies Were Born: The Quest for Cosmic Dawn'.

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