We now know that the James Webb Space Telescope works flawlessly. Because the telescope caught the first images of a star. NASA shared a frame of images of a star taken using 18 pieces of the primary mirror. The square looks like a random collection of blurry dots, but that’s exactly what the mission team expected. The images will help scientists finish the long mirror alignment process using the telescope’s Near Infrared Camera, or NIRCam.
The images came from a 25-hour effort pointing the James Webb Space Telescope at 156 different locations and producing 1,560 images with NIRCam’s sensors. The team created this frame using the signature of each mirror piece in a single frame. It’s not actually the whole frame you see above – the full-resolution snapshot is over two gigapixels.
Researchers expect new scientifically useful images from JWST in the summer. We can say that these images will be much more exciting, especially when they begin to provide an important glimpse into the early universe. However, this first image shows us that the telescope is working and is extremely important in that respect.
11992
