A star of light, a brilliant star The James Webb Space Telescope saw its first star (although it wasn’t quite tonight) – and even took a selfie, NASA announced Friday.
The steps are part of a months-long process of aligning the observatory’s massive golden mirror that astronomers hope will begin unraveling the mysteries of the early universe by this summer.
The first image sent to the universe is far from stunning: 18 misty white dots on a black background, all showing the same thing: HD 84406 a bright, isolated star in the constellation Ursa Major.
But it is, in fact, a major milestone. The 18 points were captured by 18 individual segments of the primary mirror – and the image (shown below) is now the basis for aligning and focusing those hex segments.
(NASA)
Light from the parts bounced back to the secondary Webb mirror, a circular object located at the end of long arms, and then to the instrument near the infrared camera (NIRCam) – Webb’s main imaging device.
“The entire Webb team is ecstatic with how successful the first steps in capturing the images and aligning the telescope were,” He said Marcia Rick, NIRCam principal investigator and University of Arizona professor of astronomy, said in a statement.
“We were so happy to see this light make its way into NIRCam.”
The photoshoot began on February 2, with Webb pointing to various locations around the star’s expected location.
Although Webb’s initial search covered an area of sky roughly the size of a full moon, all the points were located near the central part, which means the observatory is indeed in a relatively good position for final alignment.
To aid in the process, the team also took a “selfie” (shown below) that was taken not with an externally mounted camera but through a special lens on board the NIRCam.
(NASA)
NASA previously said taking a selfie isn’t possible, so the news comes as a welcome bonus for space lovers.
“I think the reaction was pretty much a holy cow,” Lee Feinberg, director of the Optical Telescope Element at Webb, told reporters on a call, explaining that the team wasn’t sure they could get such an image using starlight alone.
The $10 billion observatory launched from French Guiana on December 25 and is now in Earth-aligned orbit around the sun, 1 million miles (1.5 million km) from our planet, in a region of space called the Second Lagrange Point.
Webb will begin his science mission by summer, which involves using his high-resolution instruments to go back in time 13.5 billion years to the first generation of galaxies that formed after the great explosion.
Visible and ultraviolet light emitted by the first luminous objects was stretched due to the expansion of the universe, and today arrives in the form of infrared radiation, which Webb was equipped to detect with unprecedented clarity.
Its mission also includes the study of distant planets, known as exoplanets, to determine their origin, evolution, and habitability.
© AFP
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