NASA released on Wednesday the first clear photo of a star taken by the James-Webb Space Telescope (JWST), reports Futura.
This is a snapshot of some star, but the feat is elsewhere.
To obtain this remarkable image, NASA engineers had to align the telescope's 18 mirrors with an accuracy of the order of a few tens of nanometers (or a few tens of billionths of a meter).
Since February 2, specialists have thus calibrated “18 reflections of the same star, each coming from one of Webb's primary mirror segments.
These points were then rearranged, stacked and refined,” NASA tweeted.
After several weeks, the American space agency managed to obtain an accurate image.
Look how far we've come: We started with 18 scattered dots — 18 reflections of the same star, one from each of Webb's primary mirror segments.
These dots were then re-arranged, stacked, and fine-tuned, setting the stage for our first science images this summer!
#UnfoldTheUniverse pic.twitter.com/N1KvmdoH7r
— NASA Webb Telescope (@NASAWebb) March 16, 2022
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Unexpected results
The image was taken by the only camera currently available from the telescope, which is located 1.5 million kilometers from Earth.
It produces images in the near infrared NIRCam.
On the picture, we see in its center, the bright star and dozens of other stars and galaxies around.
"The result exceeds our expectations," said Ritva Keski-Kuha, one of the project managers, in a NASA statement.
Driven by this first success, the men of NASA will now calibrate three other instruments which will be operational in June or July, specifies
Courrier International
.
The telescope should make it possible to better study the universe by delivering images of stellar objects as far away as possible.
This involves, for example, observing the process in place, a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.
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