Next TAAA Monthly Meeting: Friday July 3, 2026
TAAA’s next general member meeting will be held on Friday July 3, 2026 at the University of Arizona Steward Observatory Lecture Hall auditorium room N210 at 933 N Cherry Ave., Tucson, AZ. The Main Presentation will start at 6:30 PM. This will be a hybrid meeting (both in person and on social media). TAAA Members can attend in person or by Zoom (link at the bottom of the email announcement to members). The public may attend in person or public streaming is available at https://www.youtube.com/@tucsonamateurastronomyasso2702/streams. The meeting will be available afterwards on that same YouTube channel.
Previous: Friday June 5, 2026
Title: James Webb Space Telescope (JWST): Four Years of Cosmic Discovery
Since launching in late 2021, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has completely rewritten our understanding of the Universe and our place in it. In this presentation, Dr. Kevin Hainline will discuss his research exploring ultra-distant galaxies from the beginning of time, mysterious little red dots and what they tell us about the growth of the first black holes, and even ultra-cold “brown dwarfs” floating at the edges of our galaxy. He will describe how these sources were initially found within the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES) and discuss how the deep infrared view offered by JWST is crucial for seeing the unseen.
Presenter: Kevin Hainline, PhD
Dr. Kevin Hainline is an astronomer at the University of Arizona who studies how the first galaxies formed in the early Universe. He received his bachelor’s degree in physics from Harvey Mudd College in 2006 and his PhD in astronomy from UCLA in 2012, before joining Dartmouth College as a postdoctoral researcher. He later moved to the University of Arizona, where he is currently an Associate Research Professor. As a member of the James Webb Space Telescope’s Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES), he has made headlines with discoveries of some of the earliest galaxies ever seen. He is also an active science communicator who enjoys bringing the story of the Universe to broad audiences.
James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)
Credit: NASA GSFC/CIL/Adriana Manrique Gutierrez