NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope releases first unaligned images

14 Feb 2022 Michael Banks

First images from the James Webb Space Telescope’s Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) were taken early this month (Courtesy: NASA).

NASA has released the first unaligned image from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Taken early this month from the observatory’s Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam), the picture is a crucial step towards the instrument coming online in June. It will then begin collecting light from celestial objects.

The mosaic image shows a star called HD 84406 in the constellation Ursa Major. As the telescope it not yet aligned, however, the photo shows starlight from the star 18 times, once from each of the 18 primary mirror segments.The NIRCam instrument also took a “selfie” of the JWST’s primary mirror (Courtesy: NASA)

The blurry starlight will be used to align and focus the telescope and over the coming months the team will gradually adjust the mirror segments until the 18 images become a single star.

“The entire Webb team is ecstatic at how well the first steps of taking images and aligning the telescope are proceeding,” says Marcia Rieke from the University of Arizona who is principal investigator for the NIRCam instrument in a statement. “We were so happy to see that light makes its way into NIRCam.”

Meanwhile, NASA has also released a “selfie” of the JWST’s primary mirror. The picture was taken using a specialized “pupil-imaging lens” that is inside NIRCam. The lens was designed to take images of the primary mirror segments to aid the alignment process rather than take images of space.

Michael Banks is news editor of Physics World magazine

from physicsworld.com    15/2/2022