The team of experts operating the James Webb Space Telescope released the first few images on Friday 11 February 2022. The main photo shows a star named HD 84406 and only part of the mosaic was successfully recorded for 25 hours on 2 February 2022. The images were recorded during the alignment process. JWST observatory segmented mirror.
“The entire James Webb team is thrilled to see that the first images were taken and the telescope alignment went well,” said Marcia Rieke, James Webb instrument principal investigator and University of Arizona astronomer in an official statement with NASA. /2022).
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The JWST Observatory has been in space for 48 days since its launch on December 25, 2021. Currently, the space telescope is still undergoing the commissioning process (testing the function of all elements) which is expected to last about six months. The telescope has spent the first month opening up its launch configuration and traveling nearly 1.5 million kilometers away from Earth.
For most of the remaining time, scientists focused on building and calibrating the observatory’s instruments and making adjustments to the 18-segment gold mirror of the James Webb telescope. This mirror is needed to get a sharp and clear image of the universe.
However, the James Webb telescope still has a long way to go to get the perfect image. Because the HD 84406 image shown today still doesn’t show good results. “The first image will be ugly,” said Jane Rigby, James Webb Telescope operations project scientist.
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The photo shows multiple views of HD 84406, the star recently caught by the James Webb telescope. HD 84406 is in the constellation Ursa Major or Big Bear, but is not visible from Earth without a telescope.
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