On Thursday 6th July, we bring something completely different to the festival.

We will welcome world renowned astronomer Karl Gordon to the festival to present a talk on astronomy’s most cutting edge project.

Karl is part of the team that will run the new James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled to launch in October 2018. The telescope is the successor to Hubble, and promises to deliver equally amazing images, but has a fundamental difference; this telescope works primarily in infra-red, and will be able to see through the clouds of dust that obscure Hubble’s instruments view, allowing us to view in greater detail the formation of stars across the cosmos.

Karl is an avid beer drinker and brews in his own right, so we when we heard he was coming from America to visit our festival, we couldn’t let the occasion pass.

Karl will give a half hour presentation on the James Webb Space Telescope in the upper church hall, followed by time for questions (and beer of course).

If you are heading to the Blue Dot at Jodrell Bank over the festival weekend, this is your perfect warm up.

Entry to the talk will be on a charitable donation basis (tickets to the festival must be purchased separately). Spaces are on a first come first seated basis and will be limited due to the size of the hall. Exact timing will be determined closer to the date.

NASA’s page on the James Webb Space Telescope can be found here: https://jwst.nasa.gov/index.html

Karl maintains his own page on astronomy at http://www.stsci.edu/~kgordon/