DTM welcomed Steven Beckwith, the Merle A Tuve Senior Fellow, for a month-long stay in September. Beckwith’s recent research interests have centered on the galaxies in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF), the deepest picture taken of the universe with the Hubble Space Telescope. Currently, he is attempting to understand how quickly galaxies come into being after the Big Bang and how they came to look as they do today. In piecing together this information, Beckwith has been looking at catalogs of the most distant galaxies in the Hubble image.

Beckwith visited DTM last year as a guest of staff scientist Alan Boss. He comments, “The DTM is a very attractive place with many people working on areas of interest to me". Prior to working on the distant galaxies, most of my research was on circumstellar disks around young stars. I have followed both disk research and research on the formation of planetary systems for many years. DTM is a place with several people doing cutting edge research in this area.”

During his time at DTM, Beckwith’s main goal is to finish a paper on the HUDF and to become attune to DTM happenings by interacting with the scientists here. Additionally, he will be giving a Tuve Lecture on October 19, titled “The Hubble Ultra Deep Field: The Assembly of Young Galaxies.”

Beckwith’s home institutions are the Space Telescope Science Institute and The Johns Hopkins University, both in Baltimore where he resides.