A Galaxy Revolution – CASCA 2026 Public Lecture

Galaxies IC 2163 and NGC 2207, captured in the midst of a collision by the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes. (Credit: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI)
Galaxies IC 2163 and NGC 2207, captured in the midst of a collision by the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes. (Credit: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI)
On Tuesday 9 June 2026 at 7 pm, the 2026 Public Lecture organised by the Canadian Astronomical Society will feature Nathalie N.-Q. Ouellette, Outreach Scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope in Canada and Deputy Director of IREx.
Campus MIL, Université de Montréal, Auditorium A-1502, 1375 avenue Thérèse-Lavoie-Roux, Montréal
️ Tuesday June 9th 2026
7PM
️ Free, no registration required, first come, first served
️ In French
The lecture will be recorded and made available after the event, but there will be no live stream.
Lecture Summary

Astronomers have known for a century that galaxies, immense clusters of stars and dust, populate the Universe far beyond our own Milky Way. The Hubble Space Telescope has revealed the full extent of this vastness through its deep field images, sprinkled with thousands of galaxies. Today, the James Webb Space Telescope is in turn revolutionising our understanding of their formation and evolution, revealing a surprising abundance of massive galaxies in the early Universe. Discover how Webb probes these celestial giants with its infrared vision, and how astronomers, including several in Canada, are helping to redefine our understanding of the structure of the Universe.

Speaker Biography
Nathalie Nguyen-Quoc Ouellette is an astrophysicist and science communicator. She obtained her Ph.D. in Physics & Astronomy at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario in 2016. Her research focuses on galaxy formation and evolution, particularly those found in clusters. Nathalie is currently the Deputy Director of the Trottier Institute for Research on Exoplanets (iREx) and the Mont-Mégantic Observatory (OMM) at the University of Montréal and is also the Outreach Scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope in Canada collaborating with the Canadian Space Agency. She is a frequent contributor and analyst in Canadian media on everything related to space. She also organises and participates in science outreach events from local to international scales to encourage the interest and participation of youth and the general public in space science and to increase scientific literacy in Canada.