The Webb Telescope sent the first image. You can see the most interesting in the background – Biznes Wprost

After performing a precise staging procedure to accurately calibrate the telescope mirrors. The procedure showed that each visual component performed at or exceeded the intended levels.

First photo for the web

Although the first official images from Webb were not expected until the summer of 2022, the telescope sent the first image of a distant star named 2MASS J17554042 + 6551277, located 2,000 light-years from Earth. The star was chosen because of its brightness, it is 16 times brighter than the Sun because Webb needed a bright, clear target for his calibration tasks.

We were able to make the perfect calibration that the laws of physics allow. This means that Webb captured the most accurate and detailed space image that a space telescope can currently capture, said Marshall Perrin, James Webb Space Telescope project scientist.

Read also:
NASA to Wprost: We don’t know what dark energy or matter is, or why the universe is accelerating. Web will answer that

The background is teeming with galaxies

Although the telescope looked only at the star, its optical instruments are so sensitive that a swarm of other stars and galaxies can be seen in the background of the image. This shows that when Webb is running at full power, we can expect satellite images like we’ve never seen before.

The photo was taken with a 2100 sec exposure. This indicates that not only mirror systems work perfectly, but also all other systems, for example, those responsible for installing the device.

“Everything has worked perfectly so far,” said another software scientist, Jane Rigby. – Webb loads past photos without any problem. We are still working on fine-tuning the four scientific instruments. We can already see that the working images are as sharp as those of the Hubble telescope, but they can’t see at the frequencies.

Read also:
The Webb Telescope goes into space. It will give us answers to questions we haven’t asked yet