/data/photo/2022/02/12/62078db4d7057.png "James Webb Telescope Successfully Photographed Its First Star, What’s It Like? page all")
KOMPAS.com – Telescope James Webb’s Outer Space has managed to take a photo of a star for the first time. This was conveyed by the United States Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on Friday (11/2/2022).
It is part of a months-long process to align the observatory’s massive golden mirror, which astronomers hope will begin unraveling the mysteries of the early universe next summer.
Science Alert proclaim, the first images sent back from the cosmos are stunning.
There are 18 blurred white dots on a black background, all showing the same object, namely HD 84406, a bright star isolated in the constellation Ursa Major.
Also read: James Webb Space Telescope Successfully Orbit Near The Sun
This became a major milestone, with as many as 18 points captured by the 18 individual segments of the main mirror. The resulting image forms the basis for aligning and focusing the hexagonal pieces.
Light bounces off the segment onto Webb’s secondary mirror, and then onto the instrument Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam), Webb’s premier imaging device.
“The whole team is very happy to see how good the first step of photography and coordination is telescope walk. We are excited to see the light coming into NIRCam,” said Marcia Rieke, principal investigator for the NIRCam instrument and professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona.
The shooting process began on February 2, 2022, with the Webb telescope pointing at different positions around the predicted star location.
Also read: The James Webb telescope has successfully opened a giant golden mirror in outer space
Although Webb’s initial search covered an area of sky roughly the size of a full moon, the points were all located near the center. That is, the observatory is already in a relatively good position for final alignment.
To help with this process, the team also took selfies not through an externally mounted camera, but through a special lens on the NIRCam board.
“The team wasn’t sure how to get such an image using only starlight,” said Lee Feinberg, Webb’s optical telescope elements manager.
For information, the observatory worth 10 billion US dollars was launched from French Guiana on December 25. The telescope is already in orbit parallel to Earth around the sun, or 1 million miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth, in the second Lagrange point region of space.
Also read: NASA is ready to launch the James Webb telescope next month, what is it?
The Webb telescope will begin its science mission in the summer, including using high-resolution instruments to peer back 13.5 billion years into the first generation of galaxies that formed after the Big Bang.
The visible and ultraviolet light emitted by the first luminous objects had been stretched out by the expansion of the universe, and arrived in infrared form that Webb equipped to detect with unprecedented clarity.
The telescope’s mission includes the study of distant planets, otherwise known as exoplanets, to determine their origin, evolution and habitability.
Also read: Launched at the end of December 2021, these are the facts about the James Webb Space Telescope
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