ASTRONOMY COLLOQUIUM

For years, we have been eagerly anticipating the promising capabilities that the JWST would bring to bear on scientific questions across all fields of astrophysics -- from exoplanets, to Milky Way structure, to cosmology. How is the reality of using data from JWST shaping up to meet expectations? In this talk I will discuss how the major technical leaps of JWST -- its spatial resolution, its sensitivity and its wavelength coverage -- are impacting astrophysics, specifically extragalactic astronomy and cosmology. My group is using JWST to unveil the evolution of supermassive black holes in centers of galaxies across cosmic time. I will present results from these programs, where JWST is revealing the complex physics of the interaction between the supermassive black holes and their host galaxies in unprecedented detail -- including the direct detection of the shockwaves driven into the interstellar medium by quasar winds and the discovery of close-separation dual quasars at cosmic noon. Throughout the talk, I will present and discuss other extragalactic astronomy highlights from the first two years of JWST data.