STScI Scientists part of collaboration receiving 2027 Berkeley prize. September 17, 2026 12:00PM (EDT) Release ID: 2026-407 Summary. UNCOVER project revealed JWST's "little red dots" as mysterious, dusty black holes in the early universe. Scientists from the Space Telescope Science Institute are members of the collaboration that has been awarded the 2027 Lancelot M. Berkeley-New York Community Trust Prize for Meritorious Work in Astronomy as part of their work with the UNCOVER project. The Berkeley prize is awarded annually for highly meritorious work in advancing the science of astronomy during the previous year. UNCOVER is a Cycle 1 Treasury program on NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. This program conducted ultradeep imaging and spectroscopy of and around Abell 2744, a massive group of galaxies also known as "Pandora's Cluster." Full article. Scientists from the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) are members of the collaboration that has been awarded the 2027 Lancelot M. Berkeley-New York Community Trust Prize for Meritorious Work in Astronomy as part of their work with the UNCOVER project. The Berkeley prize is awarded annually for highly meritorious work in advancing the science of astronomy during the previous year. According to the prize citation, the UNCOVER collaboration is being honored with the 2027 Berkeley prize for "combining the power of telescopes and gravitational lenses to reveal the contents of the distant universe. Through spectroscopic studies, the team has discovered galaxies at cosmic dawn, including large populations of luminous galaxies and supermassive black holes in the early universe." UNCOVER is a Cycle 1 Treasury program on NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. UNCOVER - which stands for Ultradeep NIRSpec and NIRCam Observations before the Epoch of Reionization - conducted ultradeep imaging and spectroscopy of and around Abell 2744, a massive group of galaxies also known as "Pandora's Cluster." The large mass of this cluster causes it to act as a powerful magnifying glass, bending the light from faraway background galaxies in a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing. The primary science goals of the UNCOVER program are to constrain the physical properties of the first galaxies that formed in the universe; to explore how and when galaxies irradiated their environment and reionized the surrounding neutral gas; to discover dust-obscured galaxies out to a high redshift to probe star formation early in the universe; and to build a fuller picture of star formation quenching in galaxies over cosmic time. Awarded annually since 2011 by the American Astronomical Society (AAS) and supported by a grant from The New York Community Trust, the Berkeley prize includes a monetary award and an invitation to give the closing plenary lecture at the AAS winter meeting. The 249th AAS meeting will be held in Salt Lake City, Utah, from 10 to 14 January 2027. Each year the three AAS Vice Presidents, in consultation with the Editor in Chief of the AAS journals, select the Berkeley prize winner for meritorious research published within the preceding 12 months. This year's prize recognizes the UNCOVER team for three recent articles published in The Astrophysical Journal. The first and the second present an overview of the UNCOVER project, summarize its science goals, and characterize the initial imaging and final spectroscopy from the project. The third introduces a key result from the project: evidence that the population of faint, compact "little red dots" seen by JWST in the early universe is dominated by reddened, actively accreting black holes rather than simply dusty star-forming galaxies. The team showed that these reddened active galactic nuclei are far more numerous at high redshifts than previously recognized. The UNCOVER team consists of more than 50 people located across the globe co-led by Sedona Price at STScI, and including STScI astronomers Dan Coe and Susan Kassin, along with Camilla Pacifici, formerly at STScI. The Berkeley prize will be accepted on behalf of the collaboration by Ivo Labbé (Swinburne University of Technology) who, along with Rachel Bezanson, is the co-principal investigator of UNCOVER. The Space Telescope Science Institute is expanding the frontiers of space astronomy by hosting the science operations center of the Hubble Space Telescope, the science and mission operations centers for the James Webb Space Telescope, and the science operations center for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. STScI also houses the Barbara A. Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST) which is a NASA-funded project to support and provide to the astronomical community a variety of astronomical data archives, and is the data repository for the Hubble, Webb, Roman, Kepler, K2, TESS missions and more. STScI is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy in Washington, D.C. About this Release. Credits. Media contact. Christine Pulliam Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore Susanna Kohler American Astronomical Society, Washington Contact Space Telescope Science Institute. Direct inquiries to the News Team. Images. Inbox astronomy. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Contact its News Team. Ask the News Team Contact its Outreach Office. Ask the Outreach Office

STScI announces the JWST Cycle 5 General Observer program. Status Report March 15, 2026 STScI announces the selection of 254 JWST General Observer (GO) programs for Cycle 5. This follows the review of 2,855 submitted proposals by the JWST Telescope Allocation Committee, which made recommendations to the STScI Director, who approved the final selection. The selection is balanced across a wide range of science topics with a distribution that matches the submitted proposals. Additional information about the approved programs is now available. Cycle 5 includes 225 GO programs for 8,009 hours of JWST prime time (including 3 Treasury, 9 Joint JWST-HST, and 1 Joint JWST-XMM programs), as well as 3 Survey, 13 Regular Archival, 8 Theory Archival, 3 Legacy Archival, 1 Pure Parallel, and 2 Calibration GO programs. This establishes the science program for JWST's fifth year of operations, reflecting the aspirations of the worldwide community of observers. The selected proposals were prepared by 2,333 unique investigators from 37 countries, including 44 U.S. states plus D.C., 18 ESA member states, and 7 Canadian provinces. Forty-six percent of the selected proposals are led by first-time JWST Principal Investigators. The Cycle 5 GO prime time is distributed as follows: * 105 Very Small programs (<= 20 hours) for 1,116 hours * 70 Small (> 20 and <= 50 hours) for 2,409 hours * 40 Medium (> 50 and <= 130 hours) for 3,054 hours * 10 Large (>130 hours) for 1,430 hours In terms of instrument use, the fractions of prime (prime+coordinated) hours are: MIRI 25.1% (24.8%), NIRCam 13.3% (18.2%), NIRISS 6.9% (7.1%), NIRSpec 54.7% (49.6%); 20% (27%) is imaging and 80% (73%) is spectroscopy. Cycle 5 includes Large and Treasury programs that will provide the community with immediate access to more than 2,275 hours of JWST data. The selection process for the General Observer programs represents a tremendous effort by the 7,363 investigators from 849 institutions who submitted a record number of proposals, and the 552 members of the Telescope Allocation Committee. Our deepest appreciation to all involved in a peer-review process that ensures the strongest scientific program for JWST. Astrobiology, Astronomy, exoplanet, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Station Payload manager/space biologist, Away Teams, Journalist, Lapsed climber, Synaesthete, Na'Vi-Jedi-Freman-Buddhist-mix, ASL, Devon Island and Everest Base Camp veteran, (he/him)