Specialist on James Webb Telescope to present in Nanaimo
Published 1:00 pm Saturday, June 20, 2026
Astrophysicist Nathalie Nguyen-Quoc Ouellette, the only outreach scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope in Canada, will be travelling to Nanaimo to discuss the advanced telescope, the search for alien worlds and her research on galaxy formation.
In the June presentation hosted by the Nanaimo Astronomy Society, on Thursday, June 25, beginning at 7 p.m. at the Beban Park Social Centre, audiences will hear about “Cosmic Wonders with the James Webb Space Telescope.”
Ouellette, who is also currently the deputy director of the Trottier Institute for Research on Exoplanets, and the Mont-Mégantic Observatory at the University of Montréal, told the News Bulletin that the James Webb telescope had made many incredible discoveries in space since it was launched in 2021, but it has also generated a lot more questions for scientists to ponder over.
“The James Webb telescope wasn’t intended to discover new exoplanets, but it was designed to look through the atmospheres of many of those that had been found previously and determine if the molecules give any indications that the planets may harbour some sort of alien life,” said Ouellette.
“We have been able to study the atmospheres of some exoplanets with James Webb, but we’ve discovered that it’s harder than we thought to disentangle the light from the planets and their stars. We have found one rocky exoplanet with evidence of an atmosphere, but it is very hot, and we expect that one side of it [is] covered in a lava ocean. So, we’ve discovered that planets with atmospheres are a lot harder to find, and they’re showing up in unexpected places, so we’re left with a lot of questions.”
Regardless of the challenges, Ouellette said the search for alien life continues to move stridently forward, but cautioned it’s nothing like you’d see in the movies.
“Even if something was detected, it would have to be verified through a very thorough and time-consuming process using a variety of different experiments before anything could be confirmed,” she said.
“However, we’re getting closer all the time and the next generation of telescopes that will be used will be much more sensitive to bio-signatures and other signs of life on exoplanets.”
Ouellette said that she, and many other scientists, believe that there is life out there somewhere.
She said it’s been proven that almost every star in the Milky Way galaxy has at least one planet orbiting them, so that means there are likely hundreds of billions of planets in our galaxy alone.
“The odds are, with that many planets, the conditions would be right on at least some of them where life could emerge,” Ouellette said.
“But timing is also important for us to discover alien life, particularly intelligent life like us, so the chances of two living and intelligent species to coexist in the same time period and then spot each other might be very challenging.”
Ouellette said that other amazing discoveries by James Webb so far concern the formation of galaxies.
One of the goals of the telescope is to look across deep space and time towards the beginnings of the universe and observe some of the first galaxies that were formed.
“What we’ve seen is that the early galaxies are more massive and structured than we anticipated,” she said.
“It’s like going into a birth ward at the hospital expecting to see babies, but finding teenagers instead. Some people started to think that maybe the universe is older than we thought and has been evolving longer, but there’s a lot of evidence that shows the universe is about 13.6 billion years old, so speculating that it’s older than that may not be plausible. Maybe the universe is just more efficient at making stars than we had thought.”
Ouellette obtained her Ph.D. in physics and astronomy at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario in 2016.
Her research focuses on galaxy formation and evolution, particularly those found in clusters.
She is also a frequent contributor and analyst in Canadian media on everything related to space, and organizes 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.
Check out nanaimoastronomy.com for more information.