"A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…" Those words evoke awe, anticipation, and nostalgia in many of us. You might remember seeing the original Star Wars film in a theater with your family as a kid or having marathons of all three original films at home on VHS tape. It inspired many of us to gaze up at the stars and wonder about the mysteries of the universe for the first time. The modern mythology of the Star Wars universe has stood the test of time, and the entire story has now been told in nine total films. The franchise is so popular that it even has its own holiday - May 4th, inspired by the ubiquitous Jedi phrase "may the force be with you." Luckily for Star Wars fans, there are only a few letters different in the date and the Jedi phrase in English, so a holiday was born!
Here in the library, we are taking the whole month to learn about and celebrate all things star-related. We're also announcing a few "stars" a little closer to home, right here in the library - the ProQuest One databases. ProQuest One Literature is a brand-new database with over 500,000 primary texts, over 1,200 scholarly journals, and various encyclopedias, biographies, and study guides. In addition to that, ProQuest One Business, ProQuest One Education, and ProQuest One Psychology have all gotten major upgrades with more content laid out in a manner that makes your research just a little easier. (Did you know that the creator of Star Wars, George Lucas, even founded his own educational foundation? He did, and it's covered in ProQuest One Education.)
But back to the stars above us... On Christmas Day of 2021, the James Webb Space Telescope launched thanks to the joint efforts of NASA, the European Space Agency, the Canadian Space Agency, and other partners. The successful launch was the Christmas gift of a lifetime for these team members who spent decades creating it. You can find out more about the launch with newspaper articles on ProQuest One Business, or learn more about the entire space research and technology industry. The telescope is a mind-bending and awe-inspiring marvel of modern technology because it allows us to literally see things from "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away."
When we're gazing up at the stars, the light we see left that star long ago. The stars are so far away that even at the speed of light, we can only see how that star appeared a long time ago. In other words, we are looking into the past. The farther away the star, the longer that light has been traveling to reach us and the older that light is. The James Webb Space Telescope is so powerful - and enables us to see celestial formations so far away - that the light we see from these distant stars and galaxies it finds allows us to see the universe as it was in its infancy, not long after the Big Bang. Pretty awe-inspiring, right? The amazing photographs taken by the telescope are available to the public online. You can find the latest images from 2024 and also the first historic images taken after the telescope's launch. If you click the download button in the lower right corner, you can even download the images in various sizes.
So, what are some of the most incredible things the James Webb Space Telescope has found? These are some of my favorites, and I'll admit that I got a little teary-eyed when I first saw them after their public release. (Astrophotography is the photography of outer space and it's covered in ProQuest One Education. It's not as hard to get into as you might think!)
These are the "Cosmic Cliffs," or the Carina Nebula. Behind the curtain of dust and gas, we can see the formation of never-before-seen baby stars.
It's easy to see why this celestial formation is called the"Pillars of Creation." It's located in the Eagle Nebula, about 6,500 light-years away and the amazing detail was created by combining data from two of the telescope's infrared cameras. The stars are visible thanks to the near-infrared camera, and the dust and clouds are visible thanks to the medium-infrared camera.
The Tarantula Nebula gets its name from the long, dusty filaments. (Personally, I don't think it looks like a tarantula. I would call it the Starfish Nebula.) Its more scientific name is the 30 Doradus star nursery, and it's the largest and brightest star-forming region near our own Milky Way galaxy.
This is the spiral galaxy NGC 1512, which is 30 million light-years away in a constellation called Horologium. Spiral galaxies (including ours, the Milky Way) always have a black hole at the center. So, yes, that is a black hole you are looking at.
N79 is a massive star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy. Its characteristics are similar to those of the early days of our universe when star formation was at its peak.
If you feel inspired to learn more and become more involved, you're in luck! NASA coordinates Citizen Science projects that are collaborations between scientists and the public to make real science discoveries. Volunteers (called citizen scientists) have even been included as co-authors in peer-reviewed NASA research papers. You could do something like help find clouds in the Martian atmosphere, identify distant galaxies to measure dark energy, or even (this might be the coolest one) search for extraterrestrial civilizations!
If that sounds too much like actual work and you just want to do something fun, check out these otherworldly reads in ProQuest One Literature:
- Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne
- The Time Machine by H. G. Wells
- The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
- A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
You can also learn more about the cyberpunk and magical realism fiction genres, although Star Wars was an original script created by George Lucas and not adapted from any book!
All this goes to say that whether your own journey takes you near or far, the University Library is a great launch site!
Julia Reed is the systems librarian and focuses on technology development and maintenance. She's into graphic design, photography, and spending time outdoors in her free time.