Bay Area stargazers meet Webb telescope researcher at Chabot College

HAYWARD — Jorge, a 15-year-old engineering student at Pinole Valley High School, did not expect to question a systems engineer who worked on the James Webb Space Telescope when he arrived at Chabot Community College on Tuesday for a presentation on the celestial instrument’s first published images.

But that’s exactly what happened when he got the chance to ask Dan Lewis, who worked on the telescope’s Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) at Lockheed Martin in Palo Alto, how the heck the photos released by the space agency were transmitted from approximately 1 million miles away.

“You can see it in the eyes of the audience: There’s a huge interest in science and engineering and just technology in general and all different fields more than just space,” Lewis said. “So the more we can talk to people who are coming up — they can see,e ‘It’s possible. I can do this. They did it. Why can’t I?’ ”

Lewis lives down the street from the campus. He saw that the Hayward college was hosting an event on NASA’s James Webb Telescope website and decided to go. Jorge’s mom Betsy, who declined to give her last name, also saw the college listed on that site and took her son to the event, which featured an exclusive, live-streamed Q&A panel with NASA researchers working on the telescope and offered East Bay stargazers a chance to ask the panel their own questions.

HAYWARD, CA – JULY 13: Chabot College astronomy professor Scott Hildreth, right, hosts a science discussion panel about or NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope in the school’s planetarium on Tuesday, July 12, 2022, in Hayward, Calif. (Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Group)

“I’m so glad that they were able to do this programming,” Betsy said. “There should be more of them. I’m actually really surprised. I’ve been looking everywhere, even in San Francisco at the California Academy of Sciences. Nobody else is hosting an event like this. There’s a need for it, there’s a thirst for it.”

Avalon Everett, a 16-year-old senior at Liberty High School in Brentwood, embodied that need. She said in an interview that she felt excited when she looked up at the photos of galaxy clusters and nebulas being projected on the college planetarium’s dome.

“I’m so interested in astronomy, and I want to see more like that, and I want to be part of hopefully in the future of technology, equipment and a team force that can really find out more about everything,” she said.

HAYWARD, CA – JULY 13: Community members watch an online science discussion panel about NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope in the Chabot College planetarium on Tuesday, July 12, 2022, in Hayward, Calif. (Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Group)

The event broke ground in several ways, according to Scott Hildreth, who oversaw the program. Hildreth has taught astronomy at Chabot College for 33 years and was selected last year as one of the first community college faculty members ever named to NASA’s Airborne Astronomy Ambassador Program.

“NASA in my history never has intentionally gone out as well as they have this time to say ‘We want to be inclusive,’ ” Hildreth said.

During the event, Hildreth used a basketball to represent the sun and a grain of Cream of Wheat hot cereal to visualize astronomical distances and scale of what they saw in photos sent by the telescope before handing out fresh Starbursts to anyone brave enough to pose a question.

Hildreth answered follow-up questions from curious East Bay residents for more than an hour and a half after the panel stream ended with an audible “wow” and clapping in the planetarium.

“There’s a neat tagline they’re using: ‘This is your telescope.’ That’s really neat because what they want is folks all around the world and all over the country and all of them in our community to feel that it is indeed their telescope,” Hildreth said, adding that the inclusivity at the center of the event will benefit NASA and everyone in tackling the challenges of making the next space telescope.

“I want the brilliant minds, I don’t care what color, I don’t care who they love, how they decide to live their life, whether they want to root for the Giants or A’s — none of that to me is relevant to brains and heart. What I want are the best brains and the strongest heart because they’re going to need them to help solve the problems,” he said.

As for the next telescope, Hildreth suggested placing it on the backside of the moon. But if you want to ask NASA researchers where the next space telescope could end up, Chabot College is hosting two more panels at its planetarium you can attend, one in Spanish at 10 a.m. Saturday July 16 or the second in English at noon at its Hayward campus at 25555 Hesperian Blvd.

(Courtesy: Chabot College Planetarium)

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