After its long journey that started back in December, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), is still not ready for science operations, but progress is being made.
The latest development at the L2 Lagrange Point is that the process of aligning the observatory’s mirror is nearly complete. We say nearly when really there is a lot of work do be done.
The JWST’s mirrors are aligned using the Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and that is how we have the image above. The NIRCam was used by the team to confirm that it was ready to collect light from celestial objects.
The images captured were then analysed to identify the same star in through each of the 18 primary mirror segments and presto, we have the image above which is essentially 18 instances of the same star, just from different angles as the JWSTs mirrors are still being aligned. The star in question is HD 84406 within the Ursa Major constellation.
“The entire Webb team is ecstatic at how well the first steps of taking images and aligning the telescope are proceeding. We were so happy to see that light makes its way into NIRCam,” says principal investigator for the NIRCam instrument and regents professor of Astronomy at the University of Arizone, Marcia Rieke.
Even more astounding is that the capture process for this image began on 2nd February. Since then, JWST was placed into 156 positions so as to be able to see the star from different angles. As many as 1 560 images were taken amounted to 54GB of raw data.
“The entire process lasted nearly 25 hours, but notedly the observatory was able to locate the target star in each of its mirror segments within the first six hours and 16 exposures. These images were then stitched together to produce a single, large mosaic that captures the signature of each primary mirror segment in one frame. The images shown here are only a center portion of that larger mosaic, a huge image with over 2 billion pixels,” NASA explained.
This showcases just how small the margin for error is when it comes to the observations the JWST will make, but also just how much data the observatory is capable of collecting even before it’s fully operational. As the JWST’s instruments are aligned and calibrated, the quality of imagery will only become clearer.
The JWST also managed to take a selfie of itself which you can learn more about in the video below.
The good news is Webb is working and soon we’ll know more than we ever did about the universe we live in.
[Source – NASA] [Image – CC BY 2.0 NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope]
