Cedar Amateur Astronomers Public Night August 20, 2022

Learn more about our universe as Cedar Amateur Astronomers will host Professor Brent Studer for a public event entitled "The First Stars" at 8 p.m. on August 20, 2022, at the Eastern Iowa Observatory and Learning Center. Weather permitting, after the presentation club volunteers will be operating several large telescopes to view the wonderful Iowa skies. Come early or stay late to visit astronomy displays and exhibits. All ages. Cost is free. This event is in person and on Zoom. Go to cedar-astronomers.org/events for more information.

Carl Sagan once said, “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the Universe.” Indeed, nearly every chemical element found in all the ingredients needed to make that pie are the product of an eons-long chain of events set in place by stars as they evolve. However, at the beginning of cosmic time there were no stars. Understanding when and how those first stars formed, and how they influenced the formation of the first galaxies is not well understood. Astronomers have hypotheses and models and now the James Webb Space Telescope, which is uniquely designed to help answer questions about the evolution of the early universe and perhaps even those first stars. On August 20th, we’ll talk about what those first stars might have been like and what answers JWST and the newest generation of tools might provide about this mysterious time in the universe’s evolution.